She is from here, I am not, and the board is in English
Looking for somebody comfortable in two languages or patient in one
She was born in this city and I arrived seven years ago, and the strange thing about this board is that it runs almost entirely in English, which is her third language and my second and nobody's first. So the most delicate conversation of my life happens in a language I am good at rather than fluent in, and I notice the gap precisely when it matters.
What I lose is the small machinery. Irony, hedging, the difference between a firm no and a soft one. Twice I have agreed in writing to something I would have queried instantly in my own language, because the sentence read as neutral and was not. Both times we sorted it out afterwards. It still sits with me.
Thirty four and thirty six, Neukölln, two years open. She dates. I know everything and I am at home. What we would like is somebody who can either switch languages when a conversation gets difficult, or who has the patience to let a sentence be built twice.
She adds: being from here is less of an advantage than it sounds. Almost everybody she has met through this arrived last year and will leave the year after, and she is the one who stays and watches them go.
We can host without difficulty, which is simply what a long lease does for you. The hard part for us has never once been the room.
Before the first drink Replying goes through the connected platform, so nothing about you is shared until you decide to share it. Take contact slowly and keep identifying details back until trust is earned. Meet somewhere public the first time, with your own way home from it, and if you are a couple then go together. Tell someone outside it where you are going. Never send money to someone you have not met. And if a post or a reply reads wrong, flag it rather than talking yourself out of the feeling.
Before you answer a post like this
Two people wrote this together, and both of them have to say yes to you. These are the three written for the man on the other end of it.
- What makes a single man read as safe
- Vetting a couple: the screening men skip
- The first meeting: a drink, all three of you