> > Second languages are fine. They normally don't lie to you. The only problem is that, even if you've passed a second language course in school, that doesn't mean you're really fluent in that language.
>
> I disagree on this one. I took Spanish for four years of high school, and I am fluent in it. When I got to college, I took a placement test in Spanish, got a perfect score, placed into SPA 3290 (Great Spanish and French poetry of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries), got an "A," and effectively completed a college Spanish program in the first term of my freshman year. :-}
>

I took Spanish in high school and college, and am _not_ fluent in it. [Spacebar] is correct; taking a second language course does not mean you are fluent. This is, after all, why you had to take a placement test to prove your fluency.