Dreaming you speak a language fluently
Why can I speak another language in dreams?
Reported the same way and with the same gap: dreamers describe fluency they do not possess, and cannot recall a phrase of it.
That rules out the flattering reading, which is that some buried competence surfaces in sleep. There is nothing to surface. The dream produced the experience of speaking well, which costs it nothing, rather than the sentences, which would cost it everything.
It is the same economy as the conversation heard through a wall: dreams generate the sound and shape of speech far more readily than speech with words in it.
People who genuinely have a second language do dream in it, and that is a different, well-documented phenomenon which should not be confused with this. The test is whether any of it survives waking.
Where this reads well
The survival test is easy to apply and settles which of the two you had.
Where it is harder
Mildly disappointing to anybody hoping the dream revealed a hidden ability.
Worth asking yourself
Do I actually speak this language? Did any words survive? Was I fluent, or did I just feel fluent?
Dream interpretation is subjective. Nothing here is a diagnosis, a prediction, or medical advice.
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