tanteMany of the people I do have online conversations with speak English as their first language. I kinda get by but you native speakers really underestimate how hard it is to express oneself in a foreign language. Concepts work differently, metaphors don't really translate, references you have used for decades don't make sense.
Simon Hain@tante I speak English quite well, but when reading a psychological book in English i realized that speaking the language and intuitively grasping its concepts are two very different things.
For all the samples, i had to translate them in my head, then imagine how i would react spontaneously - which was not working at all!