Hey, it's Gregory from Rough Translation.

So my father-in-law came to the US from the Soviet Union in the 1990s, and he worked as

a computer programmer while taking night classes in English, really threw himself at the

language, and then a few years later he got a job on Wall Street, which he was really proud

of.

Only he found that when his new boss would talk to him in English, he was lost.

He couldn't follow him.

And when his co-workers would talk, he'd also reliably lose the thread.

And then as happens in these situations, he'd get nervous, but not understanding, which

made him understand even less.

And this was stressful.

Not only because he needed the job, he had two kids to support, but because he was really

working hard day and night at studying English.

At first his response to all this was just to work harder, to stay up later, study more

grammar, but that didn't seem to help.

And that was demoralizing too, to understand everything in the classroom, everything in

the textbook, and then go to work and be lost at sea.

It took him a long time, he told me, to realize what was happening.

His co-workers, it wasn't their English that he didn't catch.

It was really their baseball.

There are so many baseball idioms in standard American English.

Which base?

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