I agree with most of your assessment. I studied Spanish (4 years) & Hebrew (4 years) in my early years. I think it's a matter of "turning on" & "exercising" that portion of the brain. Now before someone wise cracks that Americans turn on none of their brains, I could quote more than a few instances where Montrealer's were just fucking braindead......so let's not go there. It's important that this area of the brain is stimulated in early childhood (early as possible), something American Society is not attuned to.
Now this is very well answered.
Same goes for Aeolus and Beav. You guys are sayin' what others didn't.
I think I'll let go for a while on my 'wise cracks' at Yanks.
Je leve mon chapeau !
So for anybody out there who could feel 'shy' of laughed at... remember this :
In your life you will meet people who speaks your language and you still feel 'akward or shy' or really not interested to chat with. So it's totally normal to feel the same with another language. I was a teen when I could listen to any conversation in english but was just starting to even say the word 'THE' properly...until a cute girl told me this. Since then, when I meet someone with whom it seems whatever I say comes out all wrong it's simply a matter of : 'I hate the guy', 'I hate their face', 'I'm not interested in whatever they're sayin', 'They hate my gut', etc...
So go for it and try. Hell even us Quebecers don't even speak 'french' half the time
So, not to hijack further more this thread... I think that if one girl doesn't want to meet 'locals' it's probably that she won't feel ok and the chemistry won't be there anyway.
So who cares. It's her right and I would simply moove on to another one.
There's so many to choose from.