Learning a language is an exciting process. Not only does it open new frontiers for you to discover the art and culture of a region/population, but it also enables your mind to think in a different way and improves your concentration and creativity. Being bilingual from early childhood brings neurological changes to our brains that help better cognitive functioning. From personal experience, speaking different languages also makes us phonetically diverse, widening the range of phonics we can produce. There may be many reasons for someone to learn a different language — job, relocation, travel, study or maybe simply for pleasure. Whatever the reason, it is an enthralling journey. But, after we have learnt the basics, know how to order our beer and ask the directions to the museum, where do we stop? I always thought if I’m offered three wishes, one of them definitely would be to speak all languages of the world. Since no genie came out of the lamps I rubbed so far, and thus resorting to knuckle down and hard graft, when do we say we have learned one language enough and embark on the next conquest?

First, this depends on the goal we set for ourselves. It could be just the beginner level, to be able to carry out basic conversations when in a foreign territory. It could be professional competence so you can communicate effectively in your area of expertise albeit in a different language. Secondly, this relies on your sense of accomplishment. Some learn a little and think they know everything, and on the other end of the spectrum, we have people who know quite a lot but think they hardly know anything. It comes down to our confidence, but also our experience of knowing what we don’t know. So, imagine that you want to be a fluent speaker of a foreign language, and you’ve enrolled in a course, or signed up with an online tutor or just bought a self-learn kit from the nearest upmarket bookstore. After a set period you have learned all about grammar, and memorised many arcane words. Surely you are a fluent speaker now and can put native-level proficiency on your CV and your social media profile?

Under the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), there are six levels of competence from A1 as a beginner up to C1 as an advanced user, and finally C2 as the ‘Master’ in a language. I purposefully separated C1 and C2, which is the main theme of the unfinished argument in the previous paragraph. Most language instructors Learning a language is a multifaceted process. Expanding your vocabulary and honing your grammatical skills is surely a must, but there are many more aspects to it. After all, language is all about our lives, and if we don’t bring that part of life into the language we’re learning, what is left of it but a soup of inert words? This is why, the pinnacle of language competence, C2, is so elusive, because you need to soak into the life that speaks the language, to gain that true ‘mastery’.

Then again, if you have reached that state of understanding in a language, what would a piece of paper prove? But before looking into that, let’s ask whether a framework truly represents all spectrum of life that comes under the umbrella of that language. My mother tongue is Bengali, and most of my adult life was spent in Calcutta, which has a distinct style, tantamount to received pronunciation in English. Yet, growing up in a working-class society, my Bengali is certainly different from that spoken by the glitterati. Moving outside Calcutta, every district has their dialect, and its own pronunciation and depending on location I may have a vague idea what people are talking about, or I’d have no clue at all. Then you add into the mix the Bengali spoken in Bangladesh. They have their own dialects, distinctly different from those in the Indian part, and again, I’d zero to some awareness of the language they are speaking. Suppose there is a framework for Bengali proficiency, where would I stand there? I don’t know many difficult words, am clearly half illiterate in grammatical skills, I don’t know anything about the dialects – so, seems like I barely have intermediate expertise in my own, mother tongue, let alone master another language. So, the framework is busted if as a native, I don’t have native proficiency.

Is that framework completely useless then? And if that is the case, what hope have we got to identify ourselves as beginner, intermediate, advanced etc levels? To answer this question, we must go back to the basics of the language and the reason for its existence. Language is the means of expressing oneself and many people have many ways and reasons to express themselves. We cannot know all of that. From that perspective, even judging by one’s proficiency in their mother tongue, there are no ‘masters’ in the true sense. But eventually, you don’t have to be a master; all you need to do is to be able to express yourself. You need a limited set of words and, a limited understanding of the cultural and societal contexts to be working, for example, as a fishmonger as much as you do as a management consultant. They can both be masters in their areas, yet the language skills these two roles demand are entirely alien to each other. As much as it’s rare for someone to be a fishmonger and a management consultant, it is equally rare for someone to master the jargon and anecdotes of the two strata albeit in the same language.

I remember the time when I heard about Leela Roy, a British emigré settled in India with her husband, the famous Bengali writer Annadashankar Roy. It was said that she spoke perfect Bengali. It was at that time, that I suddenly thought whether she would have known the expression বোকাচোদা। A crude yet quintessential Bengali slang, it is hard to believe that any native speaker wouldn’t know the expression; yet for a scholar like Mrs Roy, it may not have featured in her repertoire of Bengali words. It does not take away her brilliance and mastery of the Bengali language she commanded, but this puts things into perspective that it is entirely possible to master a language whilst being disengaged from the quotidian expressions and connotations. It is these connotations and familiar usage that we miss on most of the organised language training sessions, that sets us apart from the lifeblood of a vivid, thriving language. That’s why it’s unexpected for a non-native Bengali speaker you understand crude expressions like গুড় দিয়ে রুটি or why to be offended if someone calls you চমচম। It’s the same in all languages; like, hexagone and ticket de métro is not just a geometric figure and a train ticket in French, or if an Englishman had a problem with his farmer, it has nothing to do with agriculture. After all, language is all about humans and as we are full of contrasts and imperfections, so is the language.

We often hear about 80-20 rules — when it comes to effort and outcome, there is nothing more cliché than this. In most areas, science, medicine, and commerce — not only has this term become a mantra, but it has also become a stark reality. The knowledge is being quantised, and we are now being given a siloed exposure. Not only they don’t want us to become the jack of all trades, they want us to be master of none as well. Language is not an exception, and we see this commonplace in how languages are taught, and the focus is on quick wins – vocabulary, conjugation, reading and writing skills rather than spoken and oral comprehension. It is good enough to flaunt a certificate, but you’re in deep waters if you rely on that 80% knowledge gained with 20% effort. So where is the happy medium where someone learning a new language wants to be if they don’t make becoming a ‘master’ of a language a be-all-or-end-all goal for their life? Here is a new set of numbers, the 90-50 rule.

You might wonder what that is and I don’t blame you if you have never heard of it before, because I made it up and I know it’s silly. So you have made 20% of the effort and gained a great deal of knowledge (I’d rather say information because of the impersonal nature of the data). Now it’s time to expand that horizon that you thought was the pinnacle. Remember The Truman Show scene where the horizon was in fact the end of the set and there is a whole new world waiting beyond that? You need to break that 80% barrier to become a part of the culture, the society, the ‘natives’. You will need to put a lot more effort into it, and the knowledge you gain compared to the effort you put in will start to become asymptotic, but that’s when you’ll start to love the language, that’s when you start to live the language.

Then there will remain the last bastion of your ‘mastery’ challenge, to get to that 100% level, but by the time you get to the 90% awareness level, you will know that you’re never going to get to that 100%, as learning a language is not a quantitative process, nor that it should matter to you anyway. You’ll know what you know not and you’ll know that nor do most of the native speakers — you are in the right zone where you want to belong. Again, this depends on your motivation. Certificates and 80-20 are great if you have a short-term goal, but to call yourself bilingual or multilingual, you will need to go that extra mile, or lightyear. Where do you stop? You only know how far you’d want to go. You can be the fishmonger or the management consultant, but you can choose, like with the sorting hat, to be both.