green peas

Petit peu vs petit pois

My infamous mistake at aged 14 when I was on a French exchange. In answer to the question, “Do you want anymore dinner?” I said, “a pea”- un petis pois in French rather than, “a little bit”- un petit peu. The family thought this was a hilarious mistake and being a mortified 14-year-old I was …

An ink image of two heads talking.

Time delay…

When you speak to someone who isn’t proficient in a language they are speaking, sometimes there is a time delay for their answers. It isn’t that they don’t understand, it’s just that they need time to work out what to say. Their brain has to do mental gymnastics to be able to contribute to the …

two women sitting at an outside table, talking

Are you fluent yet?

When you learn a second (or third of fourth…) language, people always ask this. Here are some of the meanings of fluent: What I would add is that you can be fluent in one area of the language, for example the things that you do regularly and the people that you interact with everyday. But …