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50 years ago in HS I took Spanish. I learned it very well, and became 100% fluent at age 16 as an exchange student in Chile for a year. I did not speak English during that year. Since then, I have used Spanish on a regular basis living here in the USA. I also worked and lived in Colombia in the mid 2000s, where I spoke almost no English for 2 years.
My GF and I speak Spanish far more often than English on a daily basis. She is originally from Mexico, and although she has lived in the US for 20+ years, my Spanish is much better than her English.
I also speak German. I learned German while I was in the US Army in Germany 1974-78. I took several years of classes on post and it also helped to have a German GF who did not speak English. Last summer I was in Germany for 3 months (I am retired with good income & lots of free time!). It is amazing how fast my German language ability returned. I read lots of websites and listen to TV news shows in German that I stream off of Roku.
Looking back the cool thing about it was that it wasn’t like learning 4 different languages. It was like learning one BIG one. We just learned by everyday conversations.
Latin really helped me with English vocabulary and grammar.
I don't understand people who say Latin helps with English grammar. I don't see the connection. Latin helps with some English spelling and vocabulary, yes. I hate learning languages by reading & translation, though. So dry! I need to hear languages, in order to learn them. Not that people go around speaking Latin, anyway.
Three years German, two years Russian. But the problem with learning a language in the States is that you have very few chances to practice. Spanish is the sole exception, unless you live near Quebec.
I've used my German twice and my Russian once. The time I used Russian was at Niagara Falls, talking to a Russian tourist asking for directions. My girlfriend at the time had no idea I spoke it and was freaked out.
But that was 35 years ago. About the only time I use either now is playing Geoguessr.
I don't understand people who say Latin helps with English grammar. I don't see the connection. Latin helps with some English spelling and vocabulary, yes. I hate learning languages by reading & translation, though. So dry! I need to hear languages, in order to learn them. Not that people go around speaking Latin, anyway.
I agree with you. There is no connection. I have even heard people say things like "English grammar came from Latin" and it makes me crazy, because it certainly did not! English is a Germanic language at base, its grammar is very different from Latin, and trying to force a Latin-like structure on English, as some grammarians used to do, resulted in all kinds of nonsense like "A sentence can't end with a preposition."
But I suspect what people mean is that learning Latin gave them a better understanding of grammatical terms, such as nominative, accusative, dative, genitive. These are really important in Latin and have a vestigial use in English in certain pronouns; for instance, choosing the right form in phrases such as "between you and... [I or me]."
However, you don't need Latin to learn English grammar. You don't need it for French, Spanish or Italian grammar either, for that matter. Most of the Latin paradigms no longer apply to any of these languages. I believe it's much more profitable to study any living foreign language. Any time you do this, you understand your own language better, plus it enables you to communicate with other people.
When I was homeschooling my own children (through 8th grade) we did a lot of practice with Latin and Greek roots to help with vocabulary words, but Latin grammar is entirely unnecessary in my opinion unless you want to read the classics in the original language.
I learned French in HS, German in college and can still read both languages and understand spoken newscasts- French better than German. Podcasts in those languages have really helped. It takes me awhile to get up the nerve to form sentences, especially in German, but I can.
I can also fake my way through Spanish- was exposed to pre-Vatican 2 Latin and I swear that helped. I'm dating a guy who was in the Peace Corps in Costa Rica and, 40+ years later, still maintains fluency even though his ancestral background is German. I love going to Mexican restaurants with him because he converses with the staff and I can follow it, mostly from his side since he speaks more slowly than the native speakers. It's been a great gift to be able to work with multiple languages, to read the papers and the event notices when I travel, to get into conversations with locals or with other tourists who don't speak English but speak French or German. My life is richer for it.
Latin is a referral language. Ask any in medical or science. It does have an etymology.
I took Spanish . I can mimic the accent when singing some of the songs in that foreign laguage. Yet I have no idea what I'm singing about.
When I dated my Dutch guy..he tried to teach me his native tongue. I got by on simple phrases. He enjoyed though when I could sing to him in Spanish. Fwiw..I can't carry notes well...yet that music style flows..
I attended a private high school and 2 years study of a foreign language was required. I chose German, as the German teacher served as a sponsor of a 6 week study trip of Germany during the summer before I entered senior year. This trip combined both tourism and classwork.
In my case, it was beneficial. I received an A in German for all 4 semesters in which I studied it.
French was mandatory....I remember very little.
I just remember how to say "will you go to bed with me".......that's about it.
I had a couple of years of French at the grammar school I attended in East London, grammar school was no big deal, it was akin to a slightly upmarket high school.
As French was always being spoken by my parents, the lessons were a walk in the park for me.
Sometimes the teacher, Miss Borrie, would leave the class studying a book and go out of the classroom, saying, “If you have questions, ask Jean-François.”
The trouble was, I’d use colloquialisms, kids would ask, “How do I say, it wasn’t me?” which should be, ‘ca n’était pas moi’, but I’d say what I’d heard my dad say to my mother, c’est pas moi, which was like, weren’t me!
Or a kid would ask how to say, “I don’t know”, (je ne sais pas), I’d say what I’d heard my cousins say, ‘sais pas moi’, (me? dunno).
Eventually Miss Borrie would let me sit at the back and read comics.
Many moons later, we had a similar thing with one of my German grandkids, at 8 y.o. he was learning English in primary school in Bielefeld, Nord Rhein Westfalen.
The teacher was teaching the negative of verbs, and said the negative of I am, is I am not.
Up went little Lars hand, “You are wrong Miss, my grandpa says, “I ain’t.”
She said, “Well your grandpa is wrong Lars”, to which he retorted, “No Miss, my English grandpa is a London taxi driver, he said that they know everything!”
My German daughter-in-law begged me to watch my words after that.
I took French and Spanish when in high school. In college, I took a short course in Italian plus a semester of German.
Never did I get fluent in any of them. My dream was to have 4 years of high school French. Unfortunately, my family moved right before my junior year of high school and the new school only offered 2 years of French (which I had already taken). So that ended my plan for learning more French.
Spanish was my Dad's first language, yet he never spoke it to us kids. My first high school made anyone who wanted Spanish to wait until their sophomore year to take it (stupid rule which was changed too late for me). When we moved to PR, I continued with Spanish but it was taught with more of an emphasis on conversational Spanish. I never was able to become fully fluent. Quickly I had learned that in order to become fluent, one has to be fully immersed in the language. In PR the only way to do that was to live up in the mountains where fewer people knew English.
I tried majoring in Spanish in college but quickly discovered that I lacked a good enough background when it came to grammar (verb conjugations). It was never emphasized in my 2nd and 3rd years of Spanish in HS to have succeeded as a major in college.
Looking back, I realize that schools at the time didn't really encourage or push second language learning at an early age. For example, when I hit 7th grade and junior high school, the only kids who were given access to learning French in those grades were hand-picked kids who were determined to be smarter than the rest of us. As a kid, that frustrated me as I used to wish I could have been allowed to have taken French at that time.
I would hope that schools now encourage second language learning and provide more opportunities for kids who are interested.
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