Steven R. Loomis wrote:

> I've found an interesting quandary, where the two parties in the
> conversation would really like to practive the language of the other.

[snip]

Years ago, a widespread Italian newspaper published a letter from a very
annoyed American lady who was in Italy for learning Italian. She reported
that, as soon as she tried to utter some Italian, people detected her
English accent and started speaking in English to her.

This also caused practical problems in everyday life: while her Italian
(although not perfect) was good enough to understand and make herself
understood in every situation, some people's English was so broken that she
could not understand what the heck they were trying to tell her. But those
people were so much willing to help a stranger (and/or to show how "fluent"
they were in English) that there was no way to convince them to "parlare in
italiano, per favore".

_ Marco