2026-09-18
6 分钟Last week, or in my last video, I spoke about this Canadian politician who works in Ottawa,
who has an obvious need to use French,
but claimed that he was able to understand well and couldn't speak well or couldn't speak.
And I went through some of the reasons for this phenomenon, this attitude, whether it was true or not,
and whether people who claim that can do things to get to a position
where they see themselves as people who not only understand the language...
But speak the language.
Today, I want to talk about the opposite phenomenon.
Someone commented on my video, I can speak well, but I can't understand well.
And I'm familiar with this because my wife, for example, she is able to maintain
some level of social conversation in French and Spanish and doesn't really understand what the other person is saying.
But she gets enough hooks in what she hears that she can trot out some familiar, comfortable...
Words and phrases to maintain a certain level of social interaction, which is fine as far as it goes.
But the person who commented on my video obviously felt
that his or her ability to speak was much better than the ability to understand.
And in that was almost a suggest like, how do I get better at understanding?
It's the same situation as the other.
In other words, you have to broaden the range of subjects
that you're familiar with, that you're comfortable talking about.
You have to increase your vocabulary.