This is a road of humiliation and tears
The language journey is a spiney one. It's colourful and challenging, but painful. And then there's this question 'how many languages do you speak?' From where this hangs is dependent on so many tiers of the sprawling vine of language knowledge, and a short interchange about tomato types in a market to chatting with a friend's family over tea to handling customer problems on the phone in Italian can bring about completely different outcomes. I've had 'you speak like a native' to 'there is a language barrier, is it better to speak in English?' With Russian it's the same. People are surprised when they hear I speak Russian, and often say 'and where did you learn such good Russian?' but I also got from a baker in a dusty bread booth 'you speak Russian badly, don't you', so matter-of-factly, I just laughed. The job I have currently involves solving problems with printers. 'I'm so jealous you get to practice your Itali...