Do you think that the person must be
- born in a bilingual country / completely indifferent to native, educated speakers of the language
- able to write, speak and hear with little to no grammatical errors in almost any situations / able to take college level classes without language barrier.
- able to conduct any casual conversations with little to no grammatical errors
or worse?
English is not my first language but I’m quite confident myself. And I’m always torn between saying that I’m bilingual or just fluent.
A lot of the times, I think in English and sometimes even dream in English but I also have never spent a single day in an English speaking country in my life. It’s weird to know that I’m not a bilingual per se but to think like one. Just wanted to know if anyone had similar experience.
I would say if you are both fluent and sometimes think in both languages (not translating when you talk) you are bilingual. So yes you are bilingual not ‘just fluent’, though in my opinion being fluent without visiting an English speaking country is quite an accomplishment.
It helps if at the age of ~16 you start consuming only English media (books, movies, TV-shows), and are in many English online communities ;)
I would also like to thank the people who laughed at me and my friend for having German MtG cards when we were 10 years old, that was one huge boost to my vocabulary :D