Did you learn a language at school? Do you use it?

GCSE Russian. I scraped a C - I really enjoyed reading and writing but couldn't get on with speaking at all, which ruined my grade. I vividly remember the morning of the speaking exam wondering whether I could fall down the stairs and cause an injury that might get me out of it. :oops:

I started it again on Duolingo as something to do during the height of the pandemic and I still do a five minute lesson before bed most days. I skip the speaking exercises every time though.

I was quite the cunning linguist when I left school but I find these days I’d rather just take a battery powered device in my hand and stick it in there for faster, more effective results.

I took GCSE French German Russian Italian Latin and Greek, and A-Level Russian. The idea was to read some Russian literature in the original language. Guess how much that happened outside school. :shifty:

Two or so years ago I met a Latvian who is now one of my best friends, so occasionally I use my bastardised Russian on them. My partner and I went to Paris on holiday and she was impressed by my level of French while the waiters smiled patronisingly and spoke perfect English.

I learnt Spanish very badly and still use it very badly.

Return_of_the_STAR wrote:I learnt Spanish very badly and still use it very badly.

Eth-eth-eth-eth-peth-eth-eth, Chris Waddle!

I did French from year 7-11, the teacher would read out the register using French versions of our names, I would never answer to “Rishard” and pointed out our names are our names in any language and I called her by her surname and didn’t anglicise it so she shouldn’t do it to us

You would think this would have annoyed her but it had quite the opposite affect and I quite enjoyed the lessons and ended up getting a A+ in GCSE

I have since been to France a few times and have not spoken a single word of French,

There's something wonderfully Richard about that Richard post, it's almost a song, or dance.

I had French and Russian for GCSE. I've hardly used either language since I left school, but I still try to read any Russian lettering I see about and try to figure out the English meaning.

Слава Україні

That's also funny since it's not actually Russian. 2/2 Richardposts in this thread so far.

I did French at GCSE.

With French we stopped and started too much, in my first primary school I think they started teaching it to us in Year 3 or 4. Then moved to a school which didn't teach it at Year 5 but started again in Year 6. And then they taught it from scratch again in Year 7.

I've forgotten it all now though.

I started learning German during the pandemic and am currently at sort of midway through AS level.

The difficulty of languages is that there was never any reason to use them, it's not as if we're awash with French TV in the late 90s early noughties (though its easier now with Netflix etc) and I never went to France as a child.

Learning Punjabi or Manadrin sound great in principle but they're both much harder to learn for English speakers and the average person will even less reason to use them.

I think it's useful learning a foreign language because it makes you much more empathetic to those who speak English as a foreign language and you understand why they make mistakes (including on adverts, announcements etc) because you make the same kind of mistakes with prepositions etc.

But we're just not set up as a country to do it well (perfectly reasonably), you need kids to be taking science lessons for a term in that foreign language etc to get any real traction and then they need something to reinforce it.

One of my friends sisters teaches primary school and they got here to start teaching French, but to do so she has to stay one lesson ahead of the kids. Hardly a recipe for success.

RichardUK wrote:I did French from year 7-11, the teacher would read out the register using French versions of our names, I would never answer to “Rishard” and pointed out our names are our names in any language and I called her by her surname and didn’t anglicise it so she shouldn’t do it to us

You would think this would have annoyed her but it had quite the opposite affect and I quite enjoyed the lessons and ended up getting a A+ in GCSE

This is not really true. As anyone who has learnt Japanese and katakana knows, loan words, including names, regularly get altered to suit the alphabet and sounds of the host language. In Japanese's case, it has a much more limited range of sounds compared to English, so pronunciation is changed to fit. My name, fortunately, wasn't changed that much, but mileage varied and I had friends whose names suffered more when wedged into katakana.

It's pointless getting arsey and saying "actually, my name *is*... " and attempt to force the "correct" pronunciation on them - unless they have learnt English pronunciation, they will just the letters and sounds of their own language. This happens the other way round as well, as English speakers will routinely butcher names the world over. I'm sure your french pronunciation contained a lot of hallmarks of speaking English.

And I guess ultimately, the name Richard is probably similar to names like John, Peter, Michael etc and likely thousand-year warped anglicisation of a name from a Latin or romance language.

RichardUK wrote:I have since been to France a few times and have not spoken a single word of French,

Not a single word. Now unless you didn't interact with anyone that really requires some effort to not even say Oui or Merci :lol:

Nah, Richard definitely went 'Oi Pedro, speak strawberry floatin' English like a civilised person! We conquered you you know!'

I did both French and Spanish at GCSE level and was pretty good at both, got an A in both but I was definitely better at Spanish. I did a little beginner Spanish course at work to see if so could still hack it, I tried playing a little dumb so as not to look like a show off but straight away the teacher could tell I knew a lot more than I was letting on.

I can still speak a little Spanish stuff like introducing myself, ordering food, asking directions but I’m very rusty. I really should have done something language related after leaving school but hey ho hindsight is a bitch.

My one really useless skill is I can count very far in Spansish.

I wrote:Bonjour mes amis, j'ai appris le français mais je ne l'utilise pas beaucoup.

También hablé español pero lo uso incluso menos que el francés.

Ich habe kein Deutsch gelernt, weiß aber ein paar Dinge, weil ich Rammstein gehört habe

Only the French (GCSE) bit was from memory, the Spanish (wanted to do GCSE but dropped it) was almost correct before referring to Google translate and the German was 90% Google translate.

Aside from that I know a few bits of Japanese and Arabic but not enough to attempt using either.

One of my cousins lived in Portugal for 10 years and both of her kids (now both in their 20's) are almost entirely fluent Portuguese speakers.

I studied German at GSCE but French to A-Level which meant I spent a year of my degree studying in France. I was quite lucky in that I started learning French from year 4 and always wanted to learn a foreign language to converse with others in their native tongue. I've found that, at work, people are quite appreciative if you know a foreign language (that is their mother tongue) and try to speak to them using that instead of English. I work a lot with people from Japan so hope to learn Japanese at some point if I can find the time.

The language of love. And no.

did French in years 7-9 and German from years 7-11. spent the majority of those classes just talking about wrestling and playing hangman in the back of my work book so nothing really stuck with me.

I did French up to year 9 and Welsh GCSE. Have tried learning Welsh properly a few times as an adult but never manage to stick with it.

I was in France last weekend and the only things I could really say were hello, please, thank you, yes, and biro pen :lol:

Did you learn a language at school? Do you use it?

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