Recently I met my Foreign exchange conversation partner, from a little country known as The Democratic Republic of Congo (or Congo for short). His name is Fernand. One of the first realization I encountered while meeting Fernand was that communication was going to be much harder than I had realized. I was told that our conversation partners were pretty skilled in their English, and that these conversations were more about teaching the students about American culture and our version of the English language from the perspective of a young, cultural college student. Sounds easy enough. Well, English is English right? Not so much. There are two little things called dialect and accents. Fernand, a recent English speaker form Congo, presented a tough challenge. About every other word I struggled to understand entirely. Sentences soon lost me and the challenge continued. If that didn't muddle up the conversation any further insert my dialect into the conversation. The difficulty in understanding me occurs not with my accent but with my rate. Elderly individuals and anyone who is not a pro-English native have difficulty understanding my rather fast words. So here we are, two 20-something year olds struggling to have a basic conversation with topics including favorite food, the weather, and other simple topics that actually made it across and easier to interpret. And then when English seemed rather dull, here comes the French. When Fernand discussed how he knows English (somewhat), French, and Swahili, I made the poor decision of mentioning that I somewhat knew French from studying it for 8 years. The part I did not mention however is the fact that I have not used my French skills in over two years. To put it kindly, what was about to follow was pretty rough. Since we had a difficult time corresponding back and forth in English, Fernand thought that it would be so much easier to converse if we decided to converse in French. After all, French is French, right? Yet again, very much NO. After it took me a solid 15 seconds to remember how to say "what would you like me to say to you in French?" in French, we both agreed that the French was a bad idea. Once the conversing between the two of us became a little more doable the discussions led me to this information: American food is gross (according to Fernand), Texas is very hot (in comparison to Congo), people here walk very fast (again, according to Fernand), and finally the people of Congo have strong family connections. The next conversation, now that we've already met, will hopefully be able to begin on a stronger note then this one. Now that we've both been able to rasp the other person's dialect a little better, there is only room for improvement.
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