Have you ever claimed to speak another language and that person tried challenging your claim to look for weakness? If you have, you will see them trying to disrespect you in public by deliberately using obscure words or uncommon words and claiming that if you don’t know word X (such as “wheelbarrow” or “grain”), you don’t know the language at all. They might say “I thought you were fluent” implying that you actually aren’t. It puts doubt on your abilities because the person found a weakness, even though the sample size is only one.

It’s even worse when you’re introduced to a fraud who speaks the same language as you and he says something that you don’t understand in the language, then refuses to repeat it. You can be sure that the other guy wasn’t very good at the language, but stands there all smug saying how you don’t speak the language. I normally just let it slide and mark it down as one more person I don’t want to talk to.

People seem to get this vindictive satisfaction out of exposing people who claim to have done what they themselves aren’t able to do. “If I can’t have it you can’t have it either.” Avoid these people, cut off contact and never deal with their nonsense.

Why do people social test?

One of the harshest truths I learned is that when you evaluate other learners, you often judge their language ability harshly, disregarding the amount of effort they put in. When you are being evaluated, you hope that people appreciate how much effort you’re putting in.

When you are talking to another native speaker, you don’t care about their ability because you assume that their language skills are up to par. You only focus on the act of communication which is why any problems between you and the other person is always about the way you communicate and the differences in the beliefs. It’s never about language proficiency because both of you are well immersed for many years.

But when you are talking to a non-native speaker in your native language or you are talking to a native speaker of a foreign language, you can’t assume the non-native speaker is up to par. Because there is a wide gap in language proficiency ability you don’t know where the non-native speaker is located. You can only hope the non-native speaker is good if they claim to be good otherwise there will be miscommunication problems caused by language deficiency and cultural background clashing.

Language is fundamentally supposed to be about communication but it has turned into something else due to the way human behavior changes when placed in a herd or society. Language ability becomes associated with social class and affects your social ranking. Speaking a certain way marks you as elite and well-educated while other ways would mark you as a backwards peasant. Knowing multiple languages often increases your social class because it indicates that you have more social mobility to fit in different circles and the intelligence to balance multiple languages in your head without confusing them.

On an superficial level, the majority of people are concealing their true identity because they need to project a certain image of themselves. Because humans crave the approval of the group above all else, they will exaggerate their own strengths and project a false heightened image of themselves.

Thus in order to make accurate deductions about their language skill, we challenge one another subtly and draw conclusions about their abilities when gauging their responses. Sometimes these tests are blatant but they can be covert.

A polyglot once claimed he could learn Chinese to C1 in only 3 months, even though he only knew a few Indo-European languages but no Chinese or any other Asian languages. The claim was supposed to give the average language learner confidence that they could learn really fast as long as they buy some product or follow some method. If he succeeded, he would be revered as a language learning god, his products sales increasing and his influence gaming.

Even after 3 months of studying daily for 8 hours a day, he was only at an A2 level, but to his fans and the layperson, he might as well be highly proficient at C1. Many people watch internet polyglots speak Chinese and Japanese and believe these people must have a divine gift or they have to be geniuses who have great talent. Whenever the polyglot’s name is mentioned, people often praise the polyglot for having a flawless command, even though they have no idea what is good. Foreigners will always be impressed by somebody who is better than them but not necessarily fluent. Most people will not understand this sentence unless they reach a certain level. The polyglot acts like it’s no big deal and wants to seem down to earth in an effort to elevate himself even further.

It’s examples like these that force us to test these polyglots and protect our ego.

But when we are being evaluated, we think of all the time we invested in the language and how much hard work we put into improving. All that investment makes us attached to how people perceive our language ability. No one likes to admit they studied a language for 10 years and only reached B2 when there’s plenty of internet “polyglots” who claim to be B2 in 3 months. No one likes to get be a straight A student in their language learning and do worse against someone who used to fail language learning classes and started self-studying. That’s why we envy polyglots who only studied for a few months but receive endless praise.

Because it’s so hard to objectively self assess yourself without involving your emotions and time invested, the Dunning Kruger effect exists. You overestimate yourself when you’re not skilled, but you underestimate yourself when you have actual skill. You see this all the time with language learners thinking they know everything because they do according to their “personal definition”. Sometimes we really aren’t proficient and we would soon find out if we failed a simple daily conversation.

But once we reach a decent level, we know how much we don’t know but we’re still proud of what we accomplished. It takes a while for some people to get to proficiency in speaking because they’re not that outgoing by nature. However when we encounter toxic people, whether it be our fellow language learners or native speakers, even one disparaging remark like “I thought you were fluent” can invalidate all that work and make us feel inadequate. It’s even worse if they are trying to correct your every word and just makes you want to give up on speaking practice.

Conclusion

You will be social tested over time if people know about your language abilities. Even if you try to be humble, some people are determined to make you look bad. You should recognize these traps and avoid them. On the other hand, you should be putting in the work to become fluent and being aware of your abilities. It’s easy to feel like you must be C1/C2 just because enough time has passed and you have improved, but often you must be wary of your limits.