Quote:
Originally Posted by colebatch
For that to work really well the girlfriend would need to speak little to no English.
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Yep, that's the key. And if your first language is English, you find most people you meet speak it - well I've found that anyway.
In the case I mentioned, the Spanish boyfriend spoke no Dutch and hardly any English, so it worked pretty well.
The nearest I got to that sort of situation was a home stay in Russia where the lady of the house spoke 6 languages but not English. So we conversed in French (which she used to teach) and my schoolboy version improved quite a bit. Enough to ask her why she never learnt English. She told me it was too difficult. "For instance," she asked (in French), "What's that word for the air coming in when you open a window?"
"Breeze," I said.
"No, another word."
"Wind?"
"No, less strong."
"Ahh," I said, "Draught!"
"That's it," she said. "Now how do you spell that?"
"d - r - a - u - g - h - t . - draft."
"Exactly - far too difficult!!"
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