Re:Nonnative English speakers share their gripes about speak...
by YeGoblynQueenne on Monday May 24, 2021 @03:55PM
(#27268948)
This happened in conversation between friends and family and they were not Dutch but Greek. We are famous for our time-wasting culture, even more so than the Dutch are famous for being direct.
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.