If somebody in your life speaks the language, you have an arrangement. It probably wasn't discussed.
They handle it. You don't. And the arrangement is stable, which is exactly the problem.
What It Costs You
Practically: every situation that would have been practice becomes a situation somebody else resolved.
Over a year that's several hundred exchanges you didn't have. Not difficult ones — ordering, asking, buying, greeting. The routine material that would have been ideal practice precisely because it's low-stakes and repetitive.
Which is how people spend years around a language, hearing it daily, without developing production. The opportunities existed and were consistently used up by somebody else.
What It Costs Them
Less obvious, and worth naming.
They're on duty. Every meal out, every phone call, every problem with a bill, every exchange with a neighbour. They can't be off duty in their own life, because they're the interface for two people.
If it's a partner, that's a permanent low-grade job attached to the relationship. They almost certainly won't complain about it, which isn't the same as it costing nothing.
Why It Doesn't Resolve on Its Own
Because it's efficient in the short run, and the short run repeats indefinitely.
Any individual instance is faster if they do it. Nobody is going to stand at a counter and let you struggle for ninety seconds out of principle. So the arrangement holds every single time — and each time it holds, it becomes slightly more established.
The Specific Fix
Not a conversation about it. A short list of automatic phrases.
Ordering, asking for the bill, buying a ticket, saying how many, asking where something is. Perhaps thirty exchanges, and they cover the large majority of what currently gets routed through them.
The point isn't independence as a principle. It's that those thirty are also precisely the phrases you'd need in order to start speaking generally — so the same work solves both.
About Outputly
Outputly's first songs are those exact exchanges, made automatic, in private. The arrangement ends without anybody having to negotiate it.