Re: English and its influence on other languages (was: Re: Aboutlinguistic (in)tolerance)

-----Original Message-----
From: Christophe Grandsire <Christophe.Grandsire@...>
To: Multiple recipients of list CONLANG <CONLANG@...>
Date: Wednesday, March 31, 1999 7:48 AM
Subject: Re: English and its influence on other languages (was: Re:
Aboutlinguistic (in)tolerance)

>The strangest thing is that I wasn't able to say
>even a short sentence in German! I was able to understand it, but not to
>speak it. Strange, isn't it?
Not strange at all.  After 2 years of high school German, 2 years of college
German, and US Air Force language school German I worked as a German/English
interpretor in the service.  My German was good enough that natives thought
I was also a native speaker.  That was 35 years ago,  Now I couldn't
construct a single sentence in German to save my hide, yet I can pretty much
understand it when I hear it spoken.

-Gary.