Foreign Languages, and the learning thereof

[theCZ]

I took Spanish in HS, but didn't really become good with it.  I saved up for years so I could give myself a college graduation trip to Europe for a month.  So this summer I spent a month travelling around with a friend.  I learned a few things in a few places:

France - speaking nasally does not come naturally to me, but listening to pretty french women talk is just amazing.
Spain - After a week in Spain I was talking a little, understanding a lot more, and reading even more than that.  My last night in that country I had a dream in Spanish.
Switzerland, Germany, Austria - German sounds so similar to English that at times I could understand everything a person said just by the way he said it and a few similar sounding words.  Very easy to communicate.
Italy - I never made a big attempt to speak Italian as I usually would end up trying to say it like it was Spanish (which isn't that far off anyway)
Czech Republic - So many people spoke excellent english that it made it hard to really try to speak Czech.

[doczinn]

I'm impressed.

Me? English and Brazilain Portuguese, fluently, and (in more-or-less descending order of knowledge)Spanish, French, Mandarin, Italian, and Arabic. By the time you get to the Arabic it's just a few useful lines such as "Stop" and "Get on the ground." The Mandarin is on the way to the top of the list, but slowly.

To those who have learned a language and forgotten it: don't despair. It's still all in your brain somewhere, and if you get a chance to study or speak it it'll all come back. Eight years after my high-school French, I was able to carry on a conversation with an Iraqi gentleman who spoke no English.