Weekend Chatterbox

I thought you did. But it sucks that one's got to police their activities like that.

I remember when Swapnote for the 3DS was abruptly shut down because of a single incident of a minor being able to circumvent parental controls and being contacted by an adult via the service. They realised that there was no way they could make it 100% safe and so they rather took the whole thing down with apologies to millions of users.

I tried to start with 'dakyl' but apparently it isn't a word.

Killed it. Top work.

Tids has a pattern seeking intellect, so he sees a digitus impudicus with spotty bits. (That's a horrible image)

Wordle 204 6/6

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Bah

You haven't seen my finger, Chumbles, it's majestic. The pride of Plymouth.

Wordle 204 6/6

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bored.

a real challenge would be getting all yellow/green

To be quite honest, I used Mr. Tiddles 'finger' statement to start.

Wordle 204 5/6

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My guess on row 4 was better than the answer. Gits.

But you did get the 'Green Cross Code'!

I'm too afraid to ask whether they have. Most of the time I cannot hear my own German accent when I'm speaking the Queen's English (accent? Vot accent?), so it's theoretically possible that conversely I have developed an "English" accent, though I have no idea what that would sound like (some German speakers who spent a long time in the US develop a distinct American twang, e.g. Arnie's German is a wild Austro-American mix). American friends have told me that to them I just sound British, although I've also mentioned before that I once had an (anonymous) piece of student feedback after a lecture series saying that they "couldn't understand the French lady"...

Something I have been told about a change in my spoken German is that I speak more haltingly. I know exactly what they mean by that, it happens when my brain hasn't left 'English mode' and I'm desperately looking for German words and idioms and only English ones pop up. It's particularly bad when I'm trying to tell people about something that happened in an "English" context. It's not been happening recently because I've been consuming more German media, but if all I read and hear is in English the German part of the brain goes to sleep and is difficult to wake up. I don't know how much people notice (I'm trying to convince myself that I'm able to disguise it, but I'm probably kidding myself), but I often get "English attacks", where I suddenly slip into English or start addressing people in English when I should be speaking German.

I think it is generally the experience of bilingual (and multilingual) people that each language occupies its own space independent of the other, so e.g. those who work as translators need to train themselves to connect both languages, and generally I'm really crap at translating because I know what the word means in both languages but not at the same time.

I know that my PM went through a similar experience - when he worked in Germany he used to say that he felt he didn't know enough German and at the same time had forgotten English, so that he was left sprachlos (lit. "speechless, silent" and a pun on "being without any language"). (His solution was usually to start babbling in his third language, Arabic.)* He also said that when he was back in the UK he got tense every time he needed to talk someone higher up because he was trying to get his German together until he reminded himself that he could just talk.

*He always said that the best way to get French people to talk in English is to offer either German or Arabic as alternatives. Worked like a charm...

Can your PM speak Spanish or are they just geographically challenged?