Language barrier, lack of multilingual competence? or just common sense?

So, what happens when you find yourself in a conversation with native speakers of a language it is not your mother tongue? Do they normally adapt their tone, vocabulary and, last but not least, their pace?

Some do, or at least for the first minutes of the conversation before completely forgetting about it and gradually speeding up making it almost impossible for the non-native speaker to follow the conversation. And then, after you have been silent for a while desperately trying to make sense of that endless flow of words, one of the speakers will say: "Eey, why don´t you say anything?"

It is rarely a matter of rudeness, and it is usually a matter of not speaking a foreign language which makes some people unaware of how difficult is for a English language learner to participate in a conversation with English speakers who are using slang / jokes and/or speaking at their normal pace.

Have you found yourself in that situation? What did you do? Let´s see how Pedro Almodóvar deals with it.

Pedro Almodóvar (in English)