Sorry, but I don't mean to be snobbish, but really, what's the point of sending an email to say nothing more than "hello" or "hi"? That one word doesn't convey any real meaning. I get these types of emails from people I can only assume are wanting to establish some sort of language partnership, but there's nothing stated to that effect. If they were to write, "hi, can you help me with/in English?", at least I would have a better understanding of what they want. Unfortunately, while I know many, many people on this site are honestly looking to learn a language, I wonder if there aren't that contingent that are looking to have 'friend contacts'. When the message says only, "hi", I really don't know what that person wants.
I further think some people misunderstand what 'partnership' means. A partnership means I help you, you help me. If a person speaks Indonesian for example and is looking to improve their English, while they are gaining from talking to me, I'm not learning my chosen language (which happens to be Swedish currently). It's not that I don't want to help English learners, but there's only so much time in my day. If I help everyone else, I won't have time to work on my own stuff.
I know that all sounds really bad and/or snobbish, but I work many hours a week at my job and I have outside projects that I do. Time is critical for me. Anybody else getting/feeling anything similar?
