CalifJimOn the other hand, fluency also has to do with being able to speak fairly fast for long periods of time without constantly stumbling around trying to find the right word -- that sort of thing. There should be a sort of automaticity about it that only comes after long practice -- most likely living in an English-speaking country.
Yeah, do you know how difficult that is? Ok, I know you know, that was a rhetorical question.
You need to practice speaking a lot, and that's basically only possible if you move to an "English-speaking environment", as you said.
CalifJim P.S. Rutelli's English is better, but as you point out, there are some small problems, most of which you could probably point out better than I. The lax i and lax u are always a problem for non-natives.
Heh, yeah, I just said I think that English is perfectly "decent" if the aim is to communicate. He could make himself understood (at least in theory, because someone has probably told him what to say before, and he might not know much English after all
). As for the accent, yes, the vast majority of Italians don't have a clue about any English vowels, so "bit" and "beat" are exactly the same. Maybe I'm too pessimistic, but Rutelli's English sounds much better to me than what I would usually expect to hear from Italians.
