Distance: 0, Home Yoga
Remember Study Hall?
While continuing to cram old French language memories into the present for her upcoming trip, Ciwt encountered a couple of sentences in some travel advice book. (Advice book for anxious travelers actually). Essentially, the author cautioned: If you have a rudimentary grasp of a foreign language and speak it to a native, you need to be able to understand their response. If you begin speaking in their language, they will assume you are fluent and answer you in the local speed - ie, a mile a minute to you. When they realize you aren't fluent, they will (probably with some frustration) wonder why you didn't ask "Do you speak English?" in the first place.
Ciwt finds this this advice soothing. She is very good at quickly pronoucing "Do you speak English?" And many people in Paris do, so win-win. Win-win-win because she actually reads French quite well - well enough to get by anyway and at her own speed.
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