Originally Posted by
dfw88
Great idea for a thread!
I'm an American but lived in Italy for a number of years. I only spoke a little Italian when I got there but I picked it up quickly. One time my friend and I were visiting with a lady who wanted to practice English with us. In all of her text messages and other contacts with us she communicated in English, which is fair enough since that's the language she was trying to learn.
One day we were at her house, chatting in English, and she couldn't remember a word. Instead of asking us she yelled to her son in the next room: "Come si dice __ in inglese?" (How do you say __ in English - I can't remember what the word was). He didn't know so I offered "Si dice ___" (You say ___). It simply went in one ear and out the other that I had understood her question in Italian, knew the word, and responded in Italian. Similar things happened a few times before I paused the conversation and said, in Italian, something to the effect that my friend and I both spoke fluent Italian and would be happy to help her figure out the words she wanted to use. She looked as us very confused and then I saw the light turn on. She had just assumed that we didn't speak Italian because we were Americans and had therefore totally missed that we had already had snippets of conversation with her in Italian. She hadn't even realized we were speaking Italian!
Our English-speaking family moved from UK to a part of Brussels where French was the predominant tongue. My wife and I consciously learned to speak French as a second language. Our children, then aged 6 & 4, went to a local school and were taught in French. Unlike adults they assimilated a ‘set of words’ to communicate with their friends and teachers. They did not think of it as a second language and despite the fact I become fluent in French would not use that ‘set of words’ with me when eg. Shopping.
The downside was that when we moved back to monoglot UK they dropped that ‘set of words’ because they did not need it. We tried to encourage them to ‘keep up your French’. Years later they regretted it but ‘C’est la Vie’