Hope's Thoughts on Language

On our trip to Denmark, we encountered many people who spoke more than one language, but we spoke only English. All the people we asked to give us directions did so and all the waiters knew exactly what we were saying. Yet, when they talked to each other, we had no clue as to what it was about. They could have said we were idiots and we would never have known. The babysitter we spent quite a bit of time with once told me that an old woman was complaining she couldn't pay for the coffee she had ordered. Before she told me, I thought the woman was telling the waiter what she wanted; shows how much I know. It was amazing to see how many people knew our language but how practically no American fluently speaks theirs.