I have so many thoughts about the topic of fluency that I often struggle to verbalise them coherently. Here is a poem I wrote to express some ideas. The background is a photo of an abstract artwork I created last year while I was working on my Italian.
Abstractly Fluent
When we learn our mother tongue
we aspire to speak eloquently
well-spoken
but unstuffy
attention-holding, thought-moulding
actors of grammar error shame
When we learn a foreign tongue
we emulate the speech
on the streets
of regular people
judging our fluency by how normal
it sounds - native error acclaim
