Reply #88: Unfortunately no

[TorchTheWitch]

I wish I did. When I was growing up being bilingual got a raised eyebrow. For some reason, we were supposed to be proud of the fact that we could speak only English. Foreign language instruction was only offered in high school, it was very cursory, were only elective courses and precious few languages to choose from (French, Spanish and German).

My oldest brother is fluent in 17 languages including sign language (actually I think he may have added a few in the last few years), and most of them he can read or write or both besides just being able to speak them. He must be some kind of linguistic prodigy or something, but I'm still envious. I'd be so happy if I knew even one other language fluently... or even just marginally fluently.

At one of the clubs I used to work at several of the women I worked with were fluent in English and either Spanish or Portuguese. I used to like to listen to them converse in the dressing room and marveled how they could so easily switch back and forth from one language to the other even having two conversations going on at the same time, one in English and the other in Spanish/Portuguese. I have enough trouble trying to have two conversations at once in only one language. My sister in law grew up with both English and Hungarian and she does the same thing.

One summer my brother tried to teach me and my sister sign language. She picked it up easily and still remembers a lot of it, but I sucked at it and the only two words I still remember are the words bacon and egg. Maybe I have crappy memory when it comes to languages or something.