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I am fluent in English and speak Afrikaans. In a CV I would write:Languages:English, German, conversational Afrikaans

I always find this strange. One is either fluent in a language, in which case it is understood that one can speak and write in that language, or one is not. If that is not the case, one would say I speak the language, and if you want to express the fact that you speak the language well, you can add 'well' or 'fluently'. I am of course ignoring languages that are not written.

"He was fluent in written and spoken German/English/Serbo-Croat/Swahili"

Some suggestions.
Languages: German (written and spoken)
Swahili (spoken)
C++ (written)

What about the others? Which version do you prefer? Do you also think that fluency includes both writing and speaking the language? Or should both be mentioned explicitly?

And if yes, do you prefer the version with two verbs or is the other one (writing and speech) just as good?

cuwak: in welchem Kontext?

I would not accept the use of the word "fluent" referring to writing competence.

By its very nature, speaking is a spontaneous activity (reading out loud from prepared text excluded) and one can immediately discern if someone is fluent or not--if his speech flows, he is fluent, if his speech is halting, he is not fluent.

I am fluent in French and Spanish, but I am not perfectly bilingual in either one, there are many words and some grammatical constructions I don't know. But when I speak, there is no hesitation whatever, and what I say is correct, understandable, and flowing; I'm fluent.

I can write correct, simple German with the aid of a dictionary, a grammar, a book of verb conjugations and a great deal of time. When I'm done, if I've managed to avoid any gross errors, a reader might not guess my fairly poor level of spoken German. What would be the point of calling this written effort "fluent"? I would call it highly belabored.

Any German 9-year old could have written the same thing in five minutes without thinking about it, so why should my effort be termed fluent?

Just my 2 cents.

ghol
Wenn man jemandem mitteilen will, wie gut man eine Fremdsprache beherrscht. Im Deutschen wird da in die sprachliche und die schriftliche Komponente unterschieden. Ich versuche herauszufinden, ob im Englischen da eine solche Unterscheidung auch üblich ist. Die Meinungen gehen ja teilweise dahin, dass "fluent" nur das Sprechen beschreibt und nicht das Schreiben. Was hälst du davon?

I'd dare to disagree with Peter, simply because it *sounds* fine to me to say "fluent in spoken and written German". Whether "fluent in written [language]" is to be recommended or not, well, it also sounds entirely possible, though fairly illogical, I suppose (as Peter points out).

Peter: maybe you could help out by providing a good phrase as an equivalent of the German "fließend in Wort und Schrift". i.e What would *you* say?

cuwak: with context I meant: is this your CV or is it just a conversational thing, or are you writing an e-mail to a friend?
In informal settings I'd say "my written and spoken Chinese are excellent, but my Indonesian is a bit rusty. I have a smattering of Serbo-Croat and some fairly non-existent school Spanish" etc.

However, your initial question was about "Wort und Schrift" -- this I would translate as "written and spoken English" or "He speaks and writes nine languages".

Now I get you. It was meant for a CV.

Maybe I could have some more opinions from the "natives"? What I really want to find out is whether it is customary for you guys to distinguish between the speaking and the writing capabilities in a foreign language.

Peter: I believe your example actually explains very well what is meant by "fluent in writing" (or "written German", or whatever).

If you, say, apply for a job where your task is to write texts in German language, it might very well interest your future employer if you need 2 hours or 10 minutes for a given text...

BF--you may be right. But then how would you characterize my written German--fairly accurate, but slow and not fluent? This seems awkward, even if correct in some sense.

Ghol:
> "fluent in spoken and written German"

that actually *sounds* fine to me, but I think the reason it sounds fine is because you put both adjectives together, and in the specific order that you did.

Would you accept it in the other order, or just the one alone--that is, either of these:

"fluent in written and spoken German"
"fluent in written German"

The first one sounds slightly off to me, and the second one even worse.

Regarding your "fliessend in..." question, if it must be translated fully, I don't have a good answer for you. What I actually do in this case on a CV is simply to say,
English: mother-tongue
French: fluent
German: fair
and so on, by implication referring to both spoken and written ability at a stroke.

Can you give me an example of someone who might be fluent in spoken German, and NOT 'fluent' in writing it? I grant you that Chinese or Japanese is a different story. So is someone who is illiterate but not aphasic, but then you wouldn't expect to be able to make much sense out of their CV anyway.

Peter, I think mostly it's the other way around. I know a lot of people who are quite good in writing English, but when they have to speak it - ouch!
So if I'm an employer I want to know if my future employee can only answer letters/emails in the language or if he can also stand his ground in direct discussions with the clients. Depends on the job, of course.

I agree that one should distinguish between the two levels of ability. I had an American colleague, whose parents were German. He spoke fluent German, but never formally learned it. We were in a German class together, and he had many problems with the formal grammar and so on, as he had only learned the spoken language from his parents and their friends.
In my case, I found that I could first read in German, then speak it, and finally write in it. The writing was the hardest part in my opinion, as one can, as mentioned above, labor over the sentences to make sure that the grammar is proper. My focus now is to be clear and understood. Therefore, I tend to use simpler constructions in German, to make sure that I get my idea across.

In South Africa many big companies have job application forms with a little table on it where you can indicate your level of language for reading, writing and speaking. And you often see such tables on CVs too. And the "order" of fluency is dramatically different from person to person, for example, my boyfriend can understand and speak a fair amount of Afrikaans, but cannot read it or write it, since he never learnt how to pronounciate the written letters for Afrikaans. Whereas I learned a bit of German in school, and the alphabet was the first thing we did, so I was able to read it quite well long before I was able to form a coherent sentence or write it, or even watch tv in German, since I recognized words when I saw them, but could not remember them when I wanted to use them in a sentence, and in spoken language they "flew" by too fast for me to recognize them. And for me writing it was (and sometimes still is) the final hurdle...

Hey, this is really interesting, keep it coming, guys!

AW: so now that you've teased us about the little table, please tell us what the labels were for the different levels, so we can all benefit!