When I was learning German my teacher pulled me aside to ask which of my parents spoke German. I was confused and said neither. Then belatedly I remembered that my dad did speak very rudimentary German after being stationed in Heidelberg for a few years.
This teacher was well loved but very strict, being questioned by her was always a little intimidating. I didn’t know why she was asking.
She pressed to ask if he spoke it with me and I laughed nervously and said no I asked him not to speak it because he couldn’t even conjugate verbs.
Apparently my accent was so good that she assumed I’d had more than one year of practice. The problem was my vocabulary. Ironically I needed her to translate the word for accent as I was unfamiliar with it. I was a decent student but some words tripped me up.
One day she conducted an oral exam and asked us to talk about the hospital. We could say whatever we wanted. In the middle of my nervous little monologue about how we go to the hospital when we are sick and the doctors and nurses help us she suddenly burst out laughing.
I had never seen her laugh before, at least not more than a sensible chuckle. But here she was, bent over her stomach cracking up leaving me baffled as to how talking about the nurses could possibly have inspired this extreme hilarity.
The word I was trying to use for nurse was “Pfleger” but I’d said “Fluger”. (Possibly fliegen? It’s been a long time) What I said was close to fly, and the teacher was imagining flying nurses drifting along the hospital wing.
She apologized and tried to compose herself but she admitted that hearing my extremely competent accent saying absolute nonsense was the highlight of her week.
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Lae'zel is pretty fluent in Common but since she still sometimes messes up some words, I don't believe she understands a third of all the big words Gale uses casually. My headcanon is that she memorizes them during the day and then goes to demand elaborations in the evening, and Gale is very happy to have someone to teach linguistics to.
By the end of the game she can call Vlaakith an pernicious, diminutive old fuck, cut to Gale in her corner wiping away a tear of pride
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