What is it about foreigners? I recall years ago there was a particularly dry spell and the drought was attracting international interest. Bushfires sweeping across remote wine plantations on the Extremadura border were making the news.

Bear in mind, that landlocked Extremadura situated next to Portugal is not only the Iberian peninsula’s largest province it is also the most isolated. English-speaking tourists rarely visit Extremadura.

A BBC news team turned up to interview an affected owner. Throughout the dialogue, the Spanish wine grower spoke flawless English but he was a local.

In the Spanish city of Albacete, I asked the English-speaking pharmacist if she had many English-speaking customers? “Maybe one a fortnight,” she smiled.

As the joke goes: Q: What do you call a person who speaks several languages? A: Multilingual. Q: How do you describe a person who speaks two languages? A: Bilingual. Q: What do you call a person who speaks only one language? A: British.

The English language is difficult, even for those for whom it is their first and only language. This is especially so for written English; few can write competently.  It is complex and made worse by changing fashion and writing style.

There are rules but few of us stick to them. On occasion, I have been put right on language rules by Germans. But we know how infuriatingly pedantic Germans can be.

I have a Ukrainian friend, a teacher of music. She has never visited the United Kingdom and is unlikely to do so. When emailing she often apologises for her poor command of English. Yet her command of the English language is of a higher standard than many of the letters I receive from friends born and bred in Britain.

Could you imagine a Briton apologising for an occasional slip-up when speaking Ukrainian or any Eastern European language?  A Russian ballerina apologised as she told me she doesn’t speak my language well. Yet when we met it was perfectly comprehensible.

A Latvian friend accompanied me to my Spanish medical centre. She chatted to the reception in Spanish. Then, in the company of the Russian doctor spoke to him in his own language.

Dining in a Riga restaurant I sat like a dummy as the same lady chatted with French diners on an adjacent table in their language.

Had they been German, no problem for she spoke their language too. I met countless people who speak their own language and also English; often one or two other languages too. They don’t consider it a big deal.

A Russian friend can recite Shakespeare, quote English literature from the heart and to be honest leave me well behind on these subjects. She is not alone; in fact, annoyingly she is typical.

My Latvian muse who lives on the isolated Lithuanian border sends me 500-word emails in good English. To understand my own emails better she first translates my English into Russian.

An Irish acquaintance, who to be fair, spoke excellent English thought it about time he learned French. He signed up for evening classes and failed to get through the admission test. He was advised to learn English first.

He had, as most of us have, learned the English language by ear just as many musicians play competently but can’t read sheet music.

He had never been taught grammar; the nuts and bolts of the English language. Foreigners are taught these essentials; it makes learning a language, any language, far easier or so I am told. PLEASE SHARE OUR STORIES ON SOCIAL MEDIA.

You don’t read a Michael Walsh book ~ you enter into an experience. It is a shared experience with the delightful or in some cases the less savoury characters who bring you into their stories. Living and sharing their story, the experience is a new way of enjoying the lifestyles, the incidents and adventures in which you are less of an observer than a participant in the story.

THE STIGMA ENIGMA. Michael Walsh award-winning novelist. Double-crossed in love, ex-mercenary Jack Scarlett has the sinister sinners of Liverpool’s underworld in his cross-hairs. Detective Chief Inspector Eric Jansen vows to stop his high-octane lethal feud. Can Detective Chief Inspector Eric Jansen stop Jack Scarlett, and does he really want to?

LINK TO BOOK   https://feji.us/csecyi