Thalassa_Mikra describes a conversation with a fellow traveller on a train to Belgium.

I answered them and found out that my companion (let’s call him Hasan, I’m so ashamed I forgot his real name) was originally from Algeria, but worked as a musician in Switzerland. He was traveling to Belgium to see his mother who lived there. All this was communicated with great difficulty as he spoke very little English. He really wanted to talk to me and asked me if I knew any of these languages

Arabic? No, not really.

Parlez vous francais? No, sorry.

Espanol? Nopes

He cursed in frustration. Here we were, with not a single language in common except an English vocabulary of maybe 100 odd words. But none the less, we tried. Bit by bit, with some effort, we created a pidgin vocabulary of English supplemented with Arabic, French and Spanish words that I might reasonably guess the meaning of.