[rongenre]

This makes me think of my experiences in Europe.

In my native language (English), I can twist and weasel with the language to keep from committing to... anything. It has -- too many degrees of freedom available to me.

With German, though [where I'm intermediate], I don't have that flexibility. My conversations are really straightforward and what comes out is simple enough that I can express it. I'd say that this does come at the cost of understanding and expressing nuance and condition, but maybe that's actually helpful.