General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Over 90% of Germans speak English. What foreign language do you speak? [View all]Behind the Aegis
(56,113 posts)I can speak fairly fluent Spanish. If I get in a conversation, my Portuguese, Italian, and French comes back to me. When I graduated college I was fluent in 4 foreign languages, I speak English (American), of course, and I was descent in Sign Language. I am functionally illiterate in Hebrew, Greek, and used to be so in Russian, but forgot almost every bit. I trying to re-teach myself those languages, as well as Arabic and Persian. It's going very slowly. I used to know over a hundred names for animals in Swahili, I can only remember a handful of words now. I learned enough Swahili to teach one of my little brothers before he went to Kenya; they were impressed with this basic skills!
If I watch a foreign film and I have some understanding of the grammar and lay of the language, and the film is translated properly, I can end up with a vocabulary of about 40 words by the end of the movie, but it only lasts about two weeks. I am teaching myself Cherokee. I can also sometimes understand Yiddish when its spoken, but not written, which is quite odd.