[UA] Negative Skills?

[Chris Hall]

In character generation, how does one deal with a character who has  
skills that are *below* average? For instance, it's assumed that  
everyone speaks English at a common level, but how would one handle a  
character whose first language was, say, Polish?  Perhaps that puts  
their skill at speaking English at 50% of the general population in  
America.  Does that give them an English skill of -50, and thus give  
them an extra 50 points to spend on other skills?