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<blockquote data-quote="GoingNorth" data-source="post: 754869" data-attributes="member: 1963"><p>I learned Yiddish as a small child and then as I grew up, forgot a lot of it, only to discover that I still understood it, but couldn't speak it very well.</p><p></p><p>Then, I went to live in Germany, when the Army sent us there, and discovered that learning German was a breeze.</p><p></p><p>My husband died (he was fluent as his father was from Vienna and insisted he learn both Hochdeutsch and Vienerdeutsch) back in 2002, and I (so I thought), forgot most of my German as I had no one to speak it with.</p><p></p><p>But...my mother has a foreign film addiction. The other night we were watching a German film subtitled in English. Mom turned off the sound and I realized I suddenly couldn't follow the film by the subtitles, as I had actually been happily listening to the film in German without realizing it, and the subtitles were sort of a vague synopsis of what was being said in German, as opposed to a word for word translation of the dialogue in the film. So, I asked my mother to turn the sound back on. She said, "Can you actually understand that? And I said, "Much to my surprise, yes!" Oddly, If I THINK about what is being said in German, I can only understand about half. I have to just go with the flow in under to understand with any fluency. Add in that my Yiddish is coming back spending so much time with my mother, and it's been interesting to say the least. So...my languages are some Yiddish, being able to understand a good bit of German, and fake it in speech, being able to read a good bit of Spanish, and understand quite a bit, and having a real knack with word roots that lets me read most Germanic languages to a healthy degree, and serious exposure and couple of years in school, which lets me manage spanish, though can't speak it.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="GoingNorth, post: 754869, member: 1963"] I learned Yiddish as a small child and then as I grew up, forgot a lot of it, only to discover that I still understood it, but couldn't speak it very well. Then, I went to live in Germany, when the Army sent us there, and discovered that learning German was a breeze. My husband died (he was fluent as his father was from Vienna and insisted he learn both Hochdeutsch and Vienerdeutsch) back in 2002, and I (so I thought), forgot most of my German as I had no one to speak it with. But...my mother has a foreign film addiction. The other night we were watching a German film subtitled in English. Mom turned off the sound and I realized I suddenly couldn't follow the film by the subtitles, as I had actually been happily listening to the film in German without realizing it, and the subtitles were sort of a vague synopsis of what was being said in German, as opposed to a word for word translation of the dialogue in the film. So, I asked my mother to turn the sound back on. She said, "Can you actually understand that? And I said, "Much to my surprise, yes!" Oddly, If I THINK about what is being said in German, I can only understand about half. I have to just go with the flow in under to understand with any fluency. Add in that my Yiddish is coming back spending so much time with my mother, and it's been interesting to say the least. So...my languages are some Yiddish, being able to understand a good bit of German, and fake it in speech, being able to read a good bit of Spanish, and understand quite a bit, and having a real knack with word roots that lets me read most Germanic languages to a healthy degree, and serious exposure and couple of years in school, which lets me manage spanish, though can't speak it. [/QUOTE]
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