Mine was at Erlanger/Nuremberg right before Vietnam, and didn’t reenlist for that reason. I actually spoke German before English, so I took it because I figured it would be easy for me … and it was.
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That was awesome. Thankfully, the place where I finally got my bachelor’s degree did not require foreign languages. My previous university required it… I flunked out of Spanish class in three (yes, I said three) weeks.
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My flunking specialty was guitar class of all things. After three weeks it was suggested I pick a different course, I switched to the German.
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My skills in foreign languages are poor.
3 years of Spanish in high school, and I have maybe a dozen phrases I know, other than the cuss words I learned elsewhere.
Took six credits of Russian one summer, and got a passing grade because I promised the prof I would never take any more Russian.
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Two years of Spanish in grammar school(4th; 5th grades), mostly rote, mostly story books about Miquel, his sister Juana and their burro. What a great opportunity–wasted due to the poor curriculum -or could be because he had a heavy accent, the first Hispanic(an Cuban immigrant after the Bay of Pigs) many of us, in our provincial school, had ever seen
Why are Europeans fluent in several languages-and many Americans speak loudly/slowly in foreign lands.
Took a year of Latin in HS, 4 semesters of Spanish in college (2 years of Foreign language required for a BA degree). The Latin assisted in Spanish and believe-it-or not, for one semester, had the same teacher, who’d become a PhD and professor in the interim, as in elementary school!!
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Statistics IS a foreign language to most people.
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My neighbor, who grew up in Vienna, used to question me about this all the time. Isolation, I explained. European countries are so close together that going from Vienna to Paris was akin to going from NYC to Chicago. She learned English and French growing up. I explained that when was in school, those who were college-bound were required to study one foreign language for four years, or two for two years each. It was, as we saw it, a box to be ticked, with no thought of ever being able to use the language(s) we had to take.
Airline deregulation opened up the world for Americans, and some of us got to use the languages we studied in school. Once we finally got to Europe, we wished we had studied them harder.
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We have not yet taken the whole family to a non-English-speaking foreign country but have loved our time in Quebec as a way to ease into it (though francais quebecois can be its own thing).
But the same kid who studied German had two separate European trips this year, spending most time in France, Greece, and The Netherlands, and found that both their moderate to advanced German learner skills and basic French served quite well in a few tricky spots.
So the lesson IMO is better some than none, and USING whatever you have in a practical everyday kinda way is critical for the journey to fluency…
…but we just don’t have the same “everyday” chances in most of North America.
Various household members are using Duolingo daily to hone their basic knowledge in French, Spanish, German, and Irish. That app is amazing, but for the French course that I tried several years ago, I found myself “cheating” my way through it. Plus my primary French instructor used francais parisien (her native accent, previously thought a bit common but now sorta chic), which is not standard–sort of like testing English with an American accent but on a British pronunciation standard, or perhaps even more like having a Cornish or Yorkshire or Liverpudlian accent but being tested in English on a Received Pronunciation standard.
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My French cousins said they had to take two foreign languages in school. They all speak at least 3 (some of them 5) languages fluently. They seem to pick them up quickly with ease.
My kid used Rosetta Stone to learn a language to fluency within one year. The trick to that is they have a live native-speaking tutor that is an upgrade from the standard version. It is difficult to find now, since they don’t seem to promote it anymore, but if you can get that, it is well worth the cost.
I am learning a language with AI. It’s not bad, actually. The AI will correct me and tell me what I’m saying wrong and why. I can ask it all sorts of questions regarding when to use what phrases, and we can practice different situations, like dining or taking a taxi. It’s like talking to a live person. I also use Rosetta Stone and I’ve taken classes, so I can check what the AI tells me against those other sources.
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