Susan

Grogu: No.

When I was a teenager, we went to Italy for the summer holidays. We are German, neither of us speaks more than a few words of Italian. That didn’t keep my family from always referring to me when they wanted something translated because “You’re so good with languages and you took Latin”. (I told them a hundred times I couldn’t order ice cream in Latin, they ignored that.) Anyway, my dad really loved a certain cheese there, made from sheep’s milk. He knew the Italian word for ‘cheese’ – formaggio – and he knew how to say ‘please’. And he had already spotted a little shop that sold the cheese. He asked me what ‘sheep’ was in Italian, and of course, I had no idea. So he just shrugged and said “I’ll manage” and went into the shop. 5 mins later, he comes out with a little bag, obviously very pleased with himself. How did he manage it? He had gone in and said “'Baaaah’ formaggio, prego.”

I once lost my husband in the ruins of a French castle on a mountain, and trotted around looking for him in increasing desperation. “Have you seen my husband?” I asked some French people, having forgotten all descriptive words. “He is small, and English. His hair is the color of bread.”

I once was at a German-American Church youth camp for two weeks and predictably, we spoke a whole lot of English. 

I’m Spanish and have been living in the UK for a while now. I recently changed jobs and moved to a new office which is lost somewhere in the Midlands’ countryside. It’s a pretty quaint location, surrounded by forest on pretty much all sides, and with nice grounds… full of pheasants. I was pretty shocked when I drove in and saw a fucking pheasant strolling across the road. Calm as you please.

Picture a Jewish American girl whose grasp of the Hebrew language comes from 10+ years of immersion in Biblical and liturgical Hebrew, not the modern language. Some words are identical, while others have significantly evolved.

Does everyone know the prime minister who promised to fuck the country?

Oh yeah and one time my Latin professor was at this conference in Greece and his flight was canceled, so he needed to extend his hotel stay by one more night.

We had a neighbour a few years back who did not speak any swedish, so my dad helped her with grocery shopping. At one point she asked him about some product, wondering what was in it. My dad, not knowing how to say “dill” in english, tries his best to describe the herb: what it looks like, what dishes its used in, etc. Which eventually lead to this exchange:

When my sister in law, who is from Peru, moved here to Italy she did not speak italian, I had a very very basic spanish understanding and could not speak it, my dad has a very poor english and my mum knew nothing else but italian. My brother couldn’t be assed to translate between us, and after a while we figured out he told my sister in law different stuff than what we said, so I would talk with her in english and translate for my mum, while my dad was convinced he was doing a great job speaking english by himself.