3.4.3. Biting another bullet, or taking another plunge, as you wish

Remember how hard it was for you to go cold turkey, abandoning English for a whole hour back when you first got into serious talking? Well, now that you're a couple of months into your new language, take a deep breath. Make a covenant with your LRP that neither of you will use English (or whatever) for an entire week. To make it more fun, have your LRP actually live with you for that week, or you go and live with her. Believe me, it will be a riot.

After that, if you have not already done so, it will be time to develop a rich social life (see Thomson 1993c for detailed suggestions). You are now in a position to begin new relationships entirely in the new language, even with people who know quite a bit of English (or whatever other languages you knew before you started learning this one). These relationships will be substantially different than the relationships you would build using English (or whatever), since you will be the communicative underdog. Good. Anybody can be a communicative overdog. It's a privilege to be able to be the underdog. If you are learning a minority language, its speakers may find it refreshing to finally have the upper hand in communication with an outsider such as you. You may find it painful to be a broken, struggling speaker of a language. But others have lived through it. You will too. If you don't have to, you'll be tempted not to. So if at all possible, develop a good number of relationships with people who do not know English (or whatever). This is possible in most situations, though not all.