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I only took Spanish in high school. I didn't study any foreign languages at the university level. I did, however, do quite a bit of learning of Latin roots for other components of my education, and various Romance language bits and pieces as applied to various things I was studying (the knowledge one needs of Italian, for instance, to correctly interpret musical notation...Latin itself for early music, etc.) I'm definitely not fluent in any foreign languages, but have enough of a base for Latin-based languages that it's actually super useful.
Long after leaving school also learned a bit of Malay, Italian and Vietnamese. It's almost all gone now. My Malay and French picked up a bit when I visited those countries.
Spanish in HS for 3 years. Came in handy in Mexico right after graduation. Was trying to barter for a leather handbag and did so all in English and played along until the "eras tantas gringas" phrase was uttered (or something to that effect, it was over 40 years ago now). I then launched into a spanish excoriation of them explaining that they were dealing with the wrong lady. I wound up paying the equivalent of $7 for a leather bag that I had for 20 years.
When I worked in NYC for almost 30 years I use to read the VD ads (Rosa and Miguel) on the subway and understood them. Today, I would say I wasted 3 years of my time.
I took Spanish from 7th grade on, including an hour and a half a day in high school thanks to block scheduling. I was able to get to Spanish 7 and take two levels of AP Spanish (language and literature) so I was functionally literate and at a conversational level by the time I graduated from high school. I studied abroad in Mexico and took an additional 2 years of Spanish language in college, plus several classes both in the US and Mexico conducted entirely in Spanish.
I also took two years of French in high school and a year of Portuguese in college. I also studied abroad in Iceland where I took 2 hours of Icelandic a day and lived in an Icelandic speaking homestay.
Unfortunately, time and chemobrain has destroyed my fluency. I can still read just about any Spanish newspaper, but I've lost my listening and advanced reading comprehension as well as my ability to speak comfortably.
3 years of French in high school; 2 years of Spanish in college - both requirements to graduate. Got As and Bs but can't speak a word of either language, since I never lived anywhere English wasn't spoken. Total waste of time & money; I would have used that time to learn more about academic topics that interested me, or would have helped me learn to think or research better.
I took 2 years of High school French and learned to read it and write it, but not to speak it. I can still puzzle out written French and written Spanish from that class. I did try to listen to radio Toronto as I was in New York, but I never really got the hang of speaking or understanding the spoken language.
Couple years of Spanish in Jr. High but no chance to speak it. Now I live in a Spanish-speaking country so I can read it OK from all the signs, taking my time. But can't understand the speedy, slurring dialect here, so it almost feels useless. Frustrating. Even living here is not enough! But, we mostly interact with other No. Americans, so there's that. Taking lessons again, but...
Mine is English. It's been very useful in my life. Still, I have yet to master it. I don't think I will ever master the English language. I use it every day in my life since I live in the USA. My third language was French. The most useless language ever. I don't know why they even bother to teach it in HS and College. Honestly, Chinese should be the new foreign language that should be taught in HS and College.
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