As I mentioned, there are a lot of different backgrounds, ethnicities and languages in my class. I speak to the Chilean girl in Spanish, to the Afghans/Iranians in Farsi and to most others in English as our German does not always suffice for what we want to say. There is a girl from Cameroon in my class. She is around 30, has a daughter and her mother tongue is French. She and I immediately got along in my class as she is smart, witty and has a great sense of humour. But there are a lot of things she does that drive me crazy.
On one of the first days of class, as soon as she found out I was Canadian, she immediately asked if I knew how to speak French. I laughed and told her in my broken French “Oui, juste un petite peu” (which really is just a little bit because I’ve forgotten nearly all my French) – but this “petite peu” somehow translated to “I speak French fluently” to the Cameroon girl because from that moment on, she spoke to me pretty much only in French and kept asking me to translate from German to French! Geezuz!
