Switches · Neukölln, Berlin
We would both be negotiating in a second language, which is fine
Pinned as neither_natively
- Wants
- somebody who is patient about words and precise about meaning
- Rope so far
- Eight years, in three languages, none of them my first.
- Around
- Neukölln, Berlin
Almost every partnership I have had here has been conducted in English between two people whose English is functional and not native. That sounds like a problem and after eight years I think it is mostly an advantage, because neither person can rely on nuance and both of us have to say the plain thing.
Thirty two, Neukölln. What goes wrong is specific and predictable. It is never the big words. Nobody misunderstands a limit. It is the small ones: a bit, quite, maybe, in a minute. Those carry all the weight and neither of us has a reliable sense of what the other means by them.
So I now agree a short list of exact phrases with anybody I am with, in whatever language, and we use those and nothing else for the parts that matter. It takes twenty minutes and it has never once failed me.
I switch, and have done for most of the eight years. What I want is a proper partnership rather than practice, over a long stretch, ideally with somebody who is also here for good.
Not looking for anybody who wants to improve their German on me, which happens and is tedious. Not looking for somebody who finds the whole subject of language too much effort. And not looking for anything where I would have to interpret a tone of voice, which I cannot reliably do in any of my languages.