I have a friend who took a class in which they read Beowulf in the original. Old English is a heck of a lot closer to German - but that's not even it, since I took three years of high-school German and two years of collegiate German and I was struggling.
For the record, that was enough German to comfortably read the last half of a popular novel at the time (the first half was read with the aid of a dictionary) and to use a German mathematical text as part of my B.A. thesis research.
Ah, I meant that to non-German-speaking-me, Old English looks more like "Germanic language I don't know at all" than "obvious precursor of the language in which I am fluent". While it is Germanic, I meant to describe how "close to Modern English" it feels to me, not how intelligible it is to a modern German speaker. (It figures -- in a journal entry where I admit to thinking I'm pretty good at communicating, I wind up having to clarify stuff afterwards. Serves me right for publishing a first draft.)
In my last year of French, the class was reading novels. Since the rest of my class seemed to have a much easier time of that than I did, I figure that with that much instruction and practice in French, I should have been able to keep up. That I struggled then is evidence that some people, at least those likely to choose to keep studying a foreign language as an elective after their academic requirement is fulfilled, are better at learning languages than I am.
But my description of my current skill level includes the accumulation of a fair amount of rust, as well. Other than the odd conversation with French Canadians at Pennsic and occasional French email from strangers (usually asking for information about chastity belts), I'm not called upon to use it much.
Although I have a fondness for dictionaries and languages in general, I usually manage to embarrass myself when dealing with non-Germanic languages. Once, I tried participating on an esoteric French language mailing list. I attempted to say that I joined the list because in addition to the subject matter, I liked languages. I ended up saying that it was because I liked tongues. In the anatomical sense. :blush:
Regarding note 2
For the record, that was enough German to comfortably read the last half of a popular novel at the time (the first half was read with the aid of a dictionary) and to use a German mathematical text as part of my B.A. thesis research.
Re: Regarding note 2
In my last year of French, the class was reading novels. Since the rest of my class seemed to have a much easier time of that than I did, I figure that with that much instruction and practice in French, I should have been able to keep up. That I struggled then is evidence that some people, at least those likely to choose to keep studying a foreign language as an elective after their academic requirement is fulfilled, are better at learning languages than I am.
But my description of my current skill level includes the accumulation of a fair amount of rust, as well. Other than the odd conversation with French Canadians at Pennsic and occasional French email from strangers (usually asking for information about chastity belts), I'm not called upon to use it much.
Re: Regarding note 2
Re: Regarding note 2
http://www.livejournal.com/users/brisingamen/568421.html