I write in German and half the city answers me in English
- Looking for
- somebody comfortable in either language, honestly rather than politely
- Experience
- Twenty years, four dynamics, two of them conducted in two languages.
- Around
- the west of the city, Berlin
I am from here and I still have to decide, several times a week, whether to be the person who insists on his own language or the person who switches. Mostly I switch, because the alternative is losing half the people on this board, and because I am reasonably good in English. What I lose in the switch is precision, and precision is not a small thing when you are agreeing what may be done to somebody.
Fifty eight, the west of the city, dominant, twenty years in, four arrangements and two of them run across two languages.
So what I ask for is honesty about level rather than politeness about it. Tell me if you are working hard to follow, and I will slow down and use plainer words, and neither of us will be embarrassed. The failure I want to avoid is somebody nodding along and then agreeing to something they only half understood.
What I run is a structured weekly arrangement, terms agreed in writing, obligations between times.
Not looking for anybody who wants to practise. Not looking for a person who says their German is fine when it is not, which has now happened three times. And not looking to conduct the important conversation in a language neither of us is comfortable in.