urionje

Such wise advice from the ambassador. I immigrated to a new country as well and have my own struggles with lack of robust vocabulary and nuance in the local language.

A CEO I was tutoring gave me similar advice— that I may not have the language skills on the level of a local, but I am a native English speaker and have a deeper understanding of culture in the States than anyone else around. That’s my advantage. I think about that a lot and it’s significantly influenced my perspective professionally.

Regarding your second paragraph—In my mind, you’ve bookended the most important contributors to happiness on that list with the most important contributors to discontentment. I don’t think enlightenment has to happen in a vacuum.

Absolutely. You mentioned this before, we’re also so much funnier in our own languages! That always gets to me but it’s also an interesting challenge to find ways to be funny in the adopted language within the existing framework of our abilities, even if it’s not the same kind of humor you might expect from a native speaker. Encourages experimentation to get people to giggle which, as someone super into how language is built, can be really fun if I have the energy for it.

That's interesting, that's the word we use in Hebrew for something like an apprenticeship/internship.

I have Mongolian friends from the time I lived in China, and they definitely don't type like you do. I'm impressed, you must be good with languages.