Capy

[Same_as_before]

I have recently been having quite a few meetings with young Rumanian's who as you can guess speak excellent English.
After if they don't fully understand something they come out of the meeting and ask me to clear things up. I am the old duffer.

Normally it's easy , 'over the hill' 'on the button'

The latest question was about ' could not make it clearer' they had difficulty with the negative 'could not' supporting the positive assertion.

It took some explaining.

Also I never knew ' Mary Mary quite contrary' is also 'Mistress Mary ....'

 

[Capybara]

I sometimes think that English must be a very difficult language to learn and the only advantage non-speakers have is its ubiquity, plus schools abroad are so much better than ours at introducing kids at an early age to other languages, particularly English. I'm learning a language myself and am reasonably OK at the everyday stuff but you often come across an expression which is unfamiliar and when you try and translate it it's just nonsense. You just have to learn these. Then there's accents. A former teacher of mine told me that she'd spent some time at Sunderland University, and couldn't understand a word of what the locals were saying.