OT and Just wondering : Do you know how to speak another language?

Barbarainnc--I think that you learn another language best by immersion. The first thing that will happen is that you will begin to understand some of what is said. You may not be able to speak it or write the other language. If you take classes like you have done and continue them, you will learn to put it all together. If you think about it, that is exactly how children learn. You as the parent, speak to them, show them things and say the word. They might repeat what you say but really aren't that verbal. The child has difficulty putting together a sentence but the child probably understands most of what you are saying. It is only after time and listening, that the child becomes proficient. The last skills that the child learns is reading and writing in the language.

The jr. high I attended automatically taught us Spanish. It came easily to me so I continued in high school, finishing with 4th yr. honors. That was a long, long time ago, but I still remember some of it. One of my sons chose to study German in high school. He earned an opportunity to take a student trip to Germany. A friend's daughter was going on the trip too so the other mom and I decided to sign up as chaperons. Teasing me, my son's "requirement" was that I had to know something like 25 German words. I picked up a few from hearing him around the house, so I was able to recite a list. Even now, he'll say something and I can kind of "get it".

¡sí!

I studied it in school and then lived abroad.

I speak medical jargon does that count? And, since my Dad was deaf i can also sign.

I speak the language of love.

I think you have to have an ear for language,immersion is good , but my son has lived in Mexico for almost a year now and his Spanish still isn't good.

At 40, I just decided out of the blue to learn French. I was never interested in speaking it, I just wanted to be able to read it. I did evening classes at the local college for three years. Pretty much everything on my Kindle is in French, and for years I got National Geographic magazine in French.

If you want to learn another language, it is a lot of effort. One of my classmates told me, "It's easy for you, you're young". I was only a couple of years younger than him, I just worked harder at it.

I took four years of Spanish a long time ago. I brushed up on my elementary Spanish before I went on a trip to Mazatlan. At our condo there was a young starving mama kitty living in the bushes. I asked our taxi driver where could I go to buy some cat food. I guess I twisted that around because he was astonished that I wanted to buy a cat to eat. He kept telling me, "we no eat cat". I understand Spanish better than I speak it nowadays.

I studied French, Spanish and Italian. I can read a bit in each of them, but can't speak any of them.

My parents were second generation Italian and they never learned to speak it.