I've realized in the past year I lean to reading-fluency well before spoken-fluency in a language. I can read a lot of things that I could not find a way to pronounce and I can't put a sentence together in my head half the time, even if I needed to save my life. But I can read!
@FireMonkey I know enough Spanish that I can flip to it and make sentences with it.... which utterly unhelpful as I live in South Korea and Spanish is not useful here. I can read Korean, but my speaking skills are still very bad. My tongue doesn't have the muscle memory.
@LianaBrooks
Yes, I've been able to get the gist of written Spanish for a long time, while only just being a beginner at speaking and even worse at hearing. Listening and doing real time translation is difficult. Speaking is a little easier because I make it in my head first, reading just sits their patiently waiting for me.
There used to be a news tabloid that had English on one side in Spanish on the other. That was awesome.