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I vaguely recall from an undergrad psych course a discussion of the fact that some languages - and I believe there were only a few that were widely spoken, and if I recall correctly Japanese was one of the other examples - that is sufficiently complex that merely being a native speaker did not guarantee perfect fluency. I assume this discounted the fact that people just misspeak sometimes. I've often referred to it to reassure English-learners, but thought I should be able to cite my source, and cannot find one. Is there a metric for "propensity of lifetime/native speakers to make errors" against which one can measure languages?

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    That seems like a contradiction in terms. The notion of ‘fluency’ generally assumes that the standard you’re measuring against or comparing to is an average, competent native speaker’s command of the language, so it doesn’t really make sense to say that being a native won’t make you fluent in a given language. Commented Sep 9 at 14:00
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    this sounds like a misremembering of the idea of the Poverty of the Stimulus argument for Universal Grammar Commented Sep 9 at 14:18
  • note also that the idea of the Poverty of the Stimulus is itself controversial Commented Sep 9 at 14:25
  • If you are born in a country that speaks a language and only learn that language, you are a fluent speaker of it. You are confusing level of education and native competency. Commented Sep 9 at 16:58
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    I've upvoted this because it's an idea that's floating around and is often stated as though it's a fact, so it's an important question that needs to be dealt with. I think it's important for this site to have questions and answers that deal with such common misapprehensions. (Also I thought the final question about whether there are languages where native speakers tend to make more mistakes (as judged by native speakers) than in other languages, is kind of interesting.) Commented Sep 9 at 21:50

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This isn't really possible.

The usual way "fluency" is defined in linguistics is "like a native speaker". The field of linguistics as a whole prioritizes native speakers as the highest authority on how a language works (above grammar books and such), so if native English-speakers don't consistently distinguish "who" from "whom", then that distinction isn't really part of English.

As a result, there can't really be a language where being a native speaker doesn't guarantee fluency, since being a native speaker (or at least an "average" native speaker, to avoid outliers like a deaf child acquiring English imperfectly via lip reading) is the very definition of fluency.

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  • Everything you say is true, but I would add: I just don't understand how the OP's question can be serious. Commented Sep 13 at 17:21
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    @Lambie It's a not uncommon misconception Commented Sep 13 at 20:36
  • In all my seven decades I have never heard this and I've been around language learning/teaching my whole life. Commented Sep 13 at 22:44

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