This is not an actual blog, just a short description of something that happened to me the other day.
My Dad skyped (yes, a new verb) me on Sunday to catch up a bit. Occasionally we'll switch over to Dutch to exercise my third language skills. The conversation turned to members of our family; what they were doing, how they were doing, where they were doing it. It turns out that my uncle — his brother-in-law — suffered a pretty bad stroke. Well, all, strokes are pretty bad, and as far as strokes go this wasn’t a total power-grid failure. It seems the fuse was only blown in a few bits, like the one’s responsible for communication. My dad said, “Ben is really struggling to speak English. As a matter of fact, he has great difficulty even with his vocabulary in Dutch. You can hear him fighting to find the words.”
I said, “It sounds like we’re on about the same level then, speaking Dutch. I should practice with him.”
Dad said, “No, he’s still doing slightly better than you.”
So, if you're wondering how well I speak Dutch, I'm slightly below the level of a stroke victim.
My Dad: 36 years of useful criticism.
No comments:
Post a Comment