What level of Portuguese is considered fluent?

Portugal is one of the most significant languages spoken around the globe. It is not just the 6th most widely-spoken language in the world but is also present around the world courtesy of its acquisitions over other local languages and colonial rule. It is a pleasant misunderstanding that Portuguese belongs to Portugal only, some believe it extends to Brazil too but hardly any know that Portuguese enjoys the privilege to be the official language of 9 nations such as Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, Equatorial Guiana, Portugal, Brazil, Cape Verde, and São Tomé and Principe. In addition, Portuguese is the Chinese autonomous territory of Macao’s official language.

Before we understand what level of Portuguese is considered to be fluent, it is important to understand the difference between fluency and proficiency. Proficiency is much more advanced than fluency. In fact, fluency differs from person to person. While proficiency will ultimately remain the same no matter which part of the globe you travel to. Proficiency requires an actual evaluation of different levels along with a professional level test. Apart from this, proficiency also provides you with a diploma or a certification to prove the same.

On the other hand, fluency is kind of just terminology. It only exists in your perspective.  Perspective in the sense, what you believe the perfect level of mastering a language is, would be your level of fluency. For example, if you believe being able to speak the language of Portuguese is truly mastering it then that would be your level of fluency. On the other hand, a different person might believe being able to read the language is truly mastering it. Therefore, that would be their level of fluency. This is definitely nowhere connected to proficiency. Proficiency evaluates an individual on all their skills. Therefore, to essentially achieve a certification or diploma in a specific language, you need to not only master every single skill in a language but you also need to attempt and pass the tests that will be provided in accordance to those languages.

Now coming back to the topic of what level of Portuguese is considered to be fluent. As I’ve already explained, fluency is super subjective in nature. Therefore there is no real way of discerning what level of Portuguese is truly fluent. But there are ways for you to evaluate if your level of the language is fluent enough. First evaluate your goals. Understand what your end goal is and then work backwards. Once you have understood where your end goal lies, you can then re-evaluate your position and compare it to your end goal. In this manner you will be able to understand if your level is truly fluent.

Portuguese spoken in Portugal and Portuguese spoken in Brazil are frequently much further away than the gap between English and American English. And yet they are fairly close to one another considered as a variation of the same language. They differ majorly in the use of the second person pronoun. Tu and vós are often used in Portugal, while in Brazil these are hardly used (particularly later). Brazil particularly uses você and você pronouns.