Bilingual Dating

Valentine’s Day is approaching, the city is becoming a giant sticky chocolate heart and therefore I decided to write a post about the dating life of the expat.
First of all, you can classify your London dates in three big categories:

1) You plus native English speaker. Every time you don’t understand a word or an expression you’ll hope that he’ll find that cute, while you’ll feel the dumbest of the dumbs. On the positive side, it’s like going to an English class for free.

2) You plus Italian. As we have already stated, Italians in London are everywhere, so this will happen at some point. It’s the easiest of the three, but also slightly misleading. You’ll talk about the food and the milder climate that you miss, but this doesn’t mean you are soulmates, you’re just two Italians in London!

3) You plus other non-native English speaker. The most complicated, because there’s a list of barriers to overcome: linguistic, cultural, accent barrier…on top of that, one of the two will always be “more bilingual”. That being said, if you can bear a conversation studded with misunderstood jokes and expressions, it might be true love.

Now, since I am a woman of the world and a loyal Tinder user, I have been in all these three situations. I have learnt that dating a Danish guy it’s still different from dating a Spanish one, as the first one will speak a better English but the second will get you more; I am more flirty if I speak in English because it helps me getting out of my comfort zone, while if I go out with an Italian I behave as if I was with some far cousin, thus zeroing the romantic potential; if I want to date an English native speaker I have to aim at Americans, because British guys seems to have the rule of not asking me out!