3 ms·

When I had a girlfriend who didn't speak English as a first language, she asked me not to simplify my English so she could improve her understanding. She'd get

• noisy_boy 5y ago
  I think that was a good ask. I automatically adapted my vocabulary to match my wife's as English isn't her native language (I tend to do that subconsciously in general irrespective of language or who I am speaking to). Over the years, we (again subconsciously) developed more constructs using this limited vocabulary mixed with words/phrases from her native language - so now we almost have our own dialect. However, since then her interactions with other highly proficient English speakers has increased and now she feels that my adjustments were actually a hindrance towards her English proficiency. I try to counter that by saying that this fluency of communication, as impure as it might be, has contributed to our relationship but I know that she has a valid point.
• bradknowles 5y ago
  During the almost eight years I lived in Brussels, Belgium, I was employed for a year as a consultant by Snow BV (a Dutch consulting company), and for six months I was working on-site at Eindhoven for ASML. They told me it was actually an advantage that I didn’t speak Dutch, because this would encourage all of them to speak English around me. A few weeks later I was asked by the same manager to stop attending the standup meetings, because it was too hard for too many people to speak English instead of Dutch. That’s only one of my Snow and ASML stories.