ships in the night

After a long day of travel and a short night of sleep, I found myself back at the money counting desk Wednesday morning. In a few dizzying hours the wonders of modern travel transported me from a world of fresh cheese and dusky-colored villas back to the windswept, and snow covered, Faroese mountains. And to the reality that I still do not speak Faroese. I am making progress, but the latest phase of my learning process is stuck in the maddening rut of mostly understanding things. In a given sentence I seem to understand either the noun, or the verbs, or the adjectives, but never the twain shall meet. This situation gets especially sticky when people ask me a question. What I hear: "[blank] you [blank] Faroese?" This leaves an enormous margin for error as I try to construct a response. Do I respond to, "Do you like Faroese?", "Do you not like Faroese?", "Do you speak Faroese?", "Why don't you speak Faroese more often?", "Why do you butcher Farose?" The possibilities are endless, and inevitably about 70% of the time I respond incorrectly, usually going with "Yes", or "Good!" Example: Them: "Do you like Faroese?" Me: "Good!" But it did feel a little like coming home to see my friends and family here, and the sun even came out for the first time in months to greet me. -a