Having spent much of my life trying to learn languages, I reckon there are four levels of mastery. The first is basic conversati

Having spent much of my life trying to learn languages, I reckon there are four levels of mastery. The first is basic conversation; the ability to order dinner in German, for instance. Many people who study a language for years never get beyond this level. However, for anglophones this skill is becoming less useful. When I began learning German 30 years ago, many adult Germans couldn’t cope in basic English. Today, the tourist who stammers a few hard-earned German words is often answered in cheery English. This is increasingly true worldwide. English today is " more widely spoken and written, than any language has ever been" , wrote Robert McCrum et al in The Story of English. In addition, smartphone apps can now translate speech on the spot. Learning German (say) just for basic conversation probably isn’t worth the effort any more.
   The second level of mastery is reading a language — perhaps not well enough to read Goethe but enough to understand a German newspaper. But this skill too is becoming obsolete. Online translation engines like Google Translate keep improving. Feed in a German article, and you’ll usually get a serviceable English version instantaneously. Google Translate isn’t quite Star Trek’s "Universal Translator" yet, but then neither are most human linguists. I often use Google Translate to draft emails in French, though the results still require some editing. In short; don’t bother learning a language just for functional reading ability.
   The third level of language mastery — high-level conversation — obviously remains useful. However, depending on the language, it can take years of work. Continental Europeans learn English relatively easily, because they absorb it almost unconsciously through TV and music, and then get to practice it in conversations with all varieties of foreigner.
   But angiophones typically get fewer opportunities to master foreign languages. Exotic languages can take herculean effort. I once met an American who had spent seven years learning Mandarin Chinese. He said he regretted having done so, because he hadn’t got much beyond basic conversation.
   The truly useful level of linguistic mastery is perfect fluency. To me, this means being able to say and understand everything in a language, even if you have an accent and make grammatical errors. If you’re perfectly fluent, you can have long evenings nattering with close friends around kitchen tables. That’s the way to understand a country. The fluent Dutch I learnt in childhood has taken me into every room of the Dutch house. In France, I’ve never got beyond the salon.
   To achieve perfect fluency, you need to start very young — preferably as an infant. The elite fashion for bilingual kindergartens and Mandarin-speaking nannies is easy to mock but it’s the correct way to learn a foreign language. Anyone starting after age 12 probably won’t get far.