Strange(r) call

He bought a house for his vacations, and he is "francophile", but he does not like ivy.

Lol. So that was the plot twist.

@topffer I wonder why France. lol

My French accent is part of my irresistible charm when I speak English. Seriously speaking, I have to agree with you : I understand several Latin languages, but I would not try to answer if I was not fluent in a language.

I wish I could repeat what I accidentally said in Spanish @Susan2015 hince never again do I try to speak it unless I know exactly what I'm sayin ....... I do know Feliz Navidad at least, thanks to that wonderful song.

@rebelann feliz navidad and la bamba!

I was happy if I get a chance to practice the language I am not so familiar too, though I find more comfortable speaking in my own language, especially with strangers or new friends. @topffer I understand what you meant. It's good to get a chance for others to practice a new language, but when we need to really discuss something, and if we can't communicate, that might create problems or misunderstanding too.

I am always pleased when a foreigner speaks to me in French, but he was confusing a lot of words, and we would not have been able to discuss if I had not decided to switch to English. It was a bit embarrassing, as he continued to speak in French.

I think you are right. My problem was to understand what it was about. If I had not switched to English, I would have never understood. I should have asked him first, and I did not.

@CinnamonGrl You can PM me your Skype name if you want to practice French.

@topffer I took two years of Spanish and two years of French when I was in high school But if you don't use it, you lose it. I'd never try without studying them all over again, lol. Embarrassing.

They are not choosing the easy option. I would not try to speak to you in Italian, it is a too difficult language for a French, with a lot of risks of misunderstandings.

@LadyDuck Maybe not the best publicity for raki. French and Italian seem to be cousins, but it is easy to make bad errors like this, if we try to translate literally from a language to another. They are full of traps.

@topffer Absolutely, it's a risky language. I still remember a French speaking waiter in a Turkish restaurant in Monte-Carlo. He wanted to explain to an Italian couple what the drink Raki contained. It was fig juice. In French fig is "la figue", but in Italian it MUST be masculine, because feminine is a part of the feminine body. Can you imagine when he translated that it contained the juice of... I will not repeat.

You learned Chinese My only attempt with a language with a non Latin alphabet was Arabic, but I had to stop after a few months for a problem of schedules, and I am unable to read it (I was supposed to learn law, and I took also Arabic courses when I was preparing a DEA (it would be a master 2 today), because I had quite no law courses at the beginning of the year).

@Drosophila It was even more difficult for me, because a large part of the students were already speaking Arabic, and were there to learn how to write and read it (it was literary Arabic). There was also a course of Arabic civilization taught by an Egyptian, and I learned a lot. I regret to have not been able to end the year : I left when I was already understanding a few words/phrases when Arabic students were talking together. It was an interesting experience.

@topffer Arabic seemed very difficult

@topffer .. I make plenty of mistakes..lol. These people ignore them. lol. Yeah..it is flattering that another person is trying to learn our language. :)

@vandana7 I am certainly also making a lot of mistakes, but the only thing important is to understand each other. This man was making a lot of confusion between words, and I would not have been able to understand what he wanted if I had not switched to English.

I certainly prefer people trying to catch up with my language than people knowing it and speaking to me in their own language. Your English is perfect, at least for me : I never had any problem to understand you.

I suppose it is the same for everyone : even if we can speak fluently both languages we always prefer to speak in our native language. It is what we do with my Mexican friend.

@Inlemay Yes, I read about French huguenots in South Africa. I suppose your owe to them or to the Germans your vineyards, as it is not a Dutch specialty. I did not knew that Afrikaans was more German than Dutch. When I was in high school, in another century, I was corresponding with a girl in Bloemfontein. We were writing in English but she was an Afrikaner.

It is a rather old discussion. I thought that Afrikaans was somewhere Dutch ? I suppose it is like Canadian French : we often need subtitles to understand it in France. People are always happy when you try to speak their language. I have wonderful memories about that in Spain where I have been often treated like a prince only because I was speaking Spanish. Even if it is "silly", you should not hesitate.

@topffer i never hesitate, I love that they assist me along the way as well - but sometimes my phrases mean something quite different. Afrikaans is a mixture of Dutch and German - I understand German better than Dutch, but if you speak Afrikaans in Europe the French, Dutch and Germans understand you quite well. Afrikaans is a Low Franconian West Germanic language - Afrikaans was considered a Dutch dialect in South Africa until the early 20th century, when it became recognised as a distinct language under South African law, alongside Standard Dutch, which it eventually replaced as an official language. A relative majority of the first settlers whose descendants today are the Afrikaners were from the United Provinces (now Netherlands and Flanders), though up to one-sixth of the community was also of French Huguenot origin, and a seventh from Germany - my hubby is of the French Huguenot origin

I wanted to buy a house in Venice to retire during years. I am not sure I will do it now, and my Italian is not that good, but Venice is my preferred city. The New York Sofitel reminds me Dominique Strauss-Kahn... and the book of Marc-Edouard Nabe.

@garymarsh6 Well, no, a house in Venice is very cheap, compared to a house in Paris or London : about 1/5th ! Several friends have a house there.

@topffer I love Venice and I can see why you would want to retire there! It is my most favourite place on earth although I would have to say you would need to be pretty well off to buy an apartment there!

You are a living proof that all Brexiters are not illiterate. The easiest would certainly have been to let him speak in my language, but... it would have been difficult to understand what he was wanting. Learning a new foreign language is not always easy : I tried literary Arabic in college, and it has been a major failure for me.

@topffer brexit seems to be progressing nicely

It is always easier to read than to write, and to write than to speak. Some Brits have also terrible accents, but it was not his case and I was understanding him with no problem... at least when he was speaking in English.

I suppose that the one flowing easily is always your native language. I hope he does not confuse words in English like he does in French.

@topffer actually, I didn't mean that, I meant after a time we would naturally understand in which we were communicating better and we'd switch to that. Maybe his maybe mine.

@topffer Well, my problem was his English was not good too, hence it's quite difficult for me to understand him, especially when we needed to discuss on the work related stuffs. But since I have already told him to speak Chinese and he insisted in speaking English, so I just tried hard to understand what he spoke. There are many races in Malaysia, mainly Malay, Chinese and Indians. Though Malay is the national language, it seems like the common language we speak among different races is English here. Yes, I went to Chinese school, and I speak Chinese most of the time with my family and friends. But not all Chinese went to Chinese school and speak Chinese, so the first language when I talk to a stranger here is usually English. Then when we realize each other know Chinese, we usually start speaking Chinese.

@kaka135 It seems that you country is a bit complicated. The good is that I will not have to learn Chinese if all Chinese speakers are learning English.

That was really funny that he insisted to speak with you in another language than Chinese, as you were both Chinese speakers. I hope that his English was good. I thought that all Malaysians were speaking Malay. You went to a Chinese school ?

@topffer C'est bon...

It was the best thing to do in this case, although he was making a big effort to try to speak in my language.

It is what I finally did or we would have never understood each other.

@topffer

I will not try to speak Italian with you : I understand it, but I am not fluent. I think that the most important is to understand each other. Do you understand French ?

@sabtraversa Shame on you ! No, we have a lot of accents in France, like in UK, and nobody would blame you for that.

@topffer I studied it at school but I don't remember much. I still understand most of it when written, when spoken it gets hard to follow.

I like ivy, especially for a hold house in the countryside. Houses are made with stones here, and the main damage that can make ivy is on the mortar between the stones. I did not fixed the limits, and I hope that he will cut only the ivy threatening his house. It is not good to remove ivy once it is on a house, it might do more damages than the ivy itself, so I hope that he will do only the minimum needed to preserve his house. I tried to talk in French with him during 2 mn, but he was confusing too much words, and I could not understand what it was about, so I switched to English. @Marguicha suggested something very smart : to tell him that I would like to practice his language. Said like that it cannot be seen as impolite.

@topffer Have you had a chance to check and see how much of the ivy your neighbor trimmed back yet, Top? (I am curious if he took the same route my neighbor took to rectify the problem he faced with the ivy.) Most houses here have a wooden frame covered with Celotex which is in turn covered with siding. The siding can be aluminum, steel, wood or petroleum based (shingles) on both walls and the roof. Normally the roof of a house here is covered with petroleum based shingles, or slate. If Ivy is allowed to grow on a house built using these materials, the Ivy can cause considerable damage to the exterior of a home. Ivy uses very strong aerial roots to anchor itself into crevices in the building material. Then the roots exude a special glue that bonds the roots to the surface of the building material. If any of the Ivy grows under the siding on the house, it can actually act as a spring, pushing the siding away from the walls of the house. Granted, if your home is built of stone or brick, then the Ivy, instead of causing damage to your home, will actually create a thermal barrier over your home's walls. This thermal barrier helps hold heat in your home during the winter and helps keep the heat out of your home in the summer. "They found ivy acted as a thermal blanket, warming up walls by 15 per cent in cold weather and cooling them in hot weather by an average 36 per cent." The only time Ivy would cause a problem when it is climbing rock or brick homes is if there was already damage to the rock or brick comprising the walls of the home. If there is a hole in the brick or rock wall, then the Ivy could intrude into the wall of the home and damage the inside walls from inside the walls themselves. You might want to contact your neighbor again, Top, and ask him if he realizes that he is making his home less energy efficient by removing the Ivy from his walls. (This is not even that new of a discovery. IDK why it isn't being yelled from the rooftops!) Here is the link to the article I read stating about the energy efficiency:

@topffer Oops! The link I gave in that last comment talks about how Ivy attaches to the walls of a house or bark of a tree, not the thermal shielding Ivy creates for a home where it is allowed to climb the walls. This is the link I meant to add to that comment. (I wanted to give both links, anyway. This just gives me a reason to create another comment here to add the second link.)

I suppose it was the only way to go for me today, as he was confusing a lot of words when he was speaking French. We finally understood each other, it is what matters.

@Tiah101 It was a bit embarrassing. He was making efforts to speak in my language, so I could not tell him that I would have better understood him in his own language.

@topffer ahaha..i can only imagine how the conversation went on..ahaha