I've just finished reading Bruce's first book, and have started on the second. There are a few things I'm unsure of though, in particular this:

Bruce mentions communicating with the deceased in several instances where it seems to me that the person in question would not speak English. The retrievals in India, the retrieval of the woman in 1400s France (he used the word "chateau" to describe the house, so I assumed it was in France), and a few retrievals mentioned in the archives of this site (one of a Roman slave comes to mind) all seem to be situations where non-English languages or at least very old, nearly-intelligible forms of English would be used by the deceased persons in question. Given this barrier, how was Bruce/the retriever able to communicate with the person being retrieved and convince him/her to leave their current location?

I vaguely remember reading somewhere that language needn't be a problem in these situations, but I can't understand how. Can anyone explain this to me?

Thanks, spooky. Whenever Bruce was quoting his conversations, I took it to mean that he remembered everything exactly as it was "said," but now that I look back on it, it is far more likely that he was paraphrasing, in a manner of speaking, the images he received.

By the way, I've been studying German for nearly four years now, and plan to make it my major once I start college. 

It's definitely had its tough moments. However, it helps that English is a German-based language, and shares many words/phrases/sentence structure rules with German. We've been studying reflexive verbs as of late, and it's been infuriating trying to remember what preposition goes with which infinitive form (e.g. sich erinnern an, sich interessieren für, etc). 

We are so used to understanding everything in terms of the physical world rules and physical world sensations.  But we need to remember that quite a lot of how we experience the physical world is through nonphysical perception.  The process of "translating" everything into physical world thinking, physical world terminology, physical world concepts, etc is a process that happens so fast that we don't even notice it happening.  Therefore, it is easy to not even be aware of the steps that take place in that process, essentially not even realizing there was any translation to begin with. 

Perception comes into our awareness first on a subconscious level and then to the conscious level.  Whether it is in the physical waking world or in the nonphysical world, information gets processed and translated before it comes into our conscious awareness. 

During nonphysical exploration, contact, and communication the entire process of perception and translation is much faster than it is in the physical world.  Sometimes it is so fast that the translation you experience during a conversation is really only a feeling and not your normal experience of words that you'd have during a regular physical world conversation. 

So, when it comes to a foriegn language and why it is not a problem, that is because when we experience a foriegn language in the physical we hear it with our physical ears and our brain hears foreign words.  But in nonphysical perception we are using different senses for perception and processing, and in the translation process that information comes into our awareness in terms that we can understand to the best of our ability according to who we are, what kind of belief system we have, what past experience we have, etc.  Essentially, you can only know and experience anything to the best of your own ability.  Otherwise, it would be out of range of your perception.  What you are capable of experiencing has to be within the realm of your own personal frame of reference, so to speak. 

ditto Vicky, well said! everything you said is precisely my experience. thanks