I lived for a couple of years in the Netherlands, so my native language is English (British variety) and my second language is Foreign.
Foreign is an amalgam of all the other European languages thrown into the conversation whenever a phrase or word from that particular language best suits the situation. English developed that way, so Foreign's not so foreign to an English-speaker. It just gets amplified in the Netherlands by the availability of TV channels from all the surrounding countries. I've watched Italian films on German stations that were dubbed auf Deutsch, maar med Nederlands onderskriving. And lip-read the actors' English! We'd also play International Scrabble, where each player uses a different dictionary.
Kids there are fluent in four of five languages before they go to school, just from watching Rue Sésame, Sesamstrasse, Sesamstraat and Play with me Sesame (among others).
The same is true in Switzerland, where they have four national languages, and English is the neutral fall-back.
I lived for a couple of years in the Netherlands, so my native language is English (British variety) and my second language is Foreign.
Foreign is an amalgam of all the other European languages thrown into the conversation whenever a phrase or word from that particular language best suits the situation. English developed that way, so Foreign's not so foreign to an English-speaker. It just gets amplified in the Netherlands by the availability of TV channels from all the surrounding countries. I've watched Italian films on German stations that were dubbed auf Deutsch, maar med Nederlands onderskriving. And lip-read the actors' English! We'd also play International Scrabble, where each player uses a different dictionary.
Kids there are fluent in four of five languages before they go to school, just from watching Rue Sésame, Sesamstrasse, Sesamstraat and Play with me Sesame (among others).
The same is true in Switzerland, where they have four national languages, and English is the neutral fall-back.