If your Chilean is having difficulties learning the local language to such a degree that people don’t tolerate his practicing attempts, then he might need to ju

If your Chilean is having difficulties learning the local language to such a degree that people don’t tolerate his practicing attempts, then he might need to just sign up for a course where a teacher, paid to be patient, will work with him. I love language-learning, and I can usually bootstrap myself to a level where the locals don’t reply in English when I want to practice. However, with Dutch I found it difficult to bootstrap and I experienced what your Chilean did. When I complained about how locals weren’t letting me practice, I was told (the famous Dutch directness!) that I needed to simply hire a teacher to get to a higher level, instead of being annoying to local people. People’s time is precious, and a foreigner speaking the local language haltingly is arguably disrespectful of their time.