[this post has already been published yesterday on draugiem.lv]
If you read my d-gramata or blog, you know it already.
I did learn English without any formal training (yes, it shows, once in a while 
).
I needed it, so I picked up books and dictionary- and then I had just few hours of lessons with some other 20 kids.
In my time, in high school French was the most commonly available language training (at least in my hometown, Turin), and that was complemented by Italian and Latin.
I learned and forgot other languages- mainly for fun.
My point with languages? I always suggest- if you already know a foreign language, when you learn a new one, try doing the basics yourself, using cassettes, DVDs, etc.
Why? Because in most cases, the “beginner” classes in language learning are filled with people that probably will not even complete the course.
In school, it is fine.
But if you pay for that- or use your spare time from family etc… it is a waste of time and money 
Also because often some schools know that the beginner classes are filled with quitters- and the best teachers are used for more advanced courses…
An high school classmate (he has a Russian girlfriend) said recently that I had a knack for languages also in school.
Actually, his grades in French were always better than mine
But I think that I owe a lot to my time spent to help, as a kid, my father in learning his roles while he was acting on stage.
My memory eventually became good enough, and after two or three runs, I knew each script by heart, from cover to cover
Ok- short-term memory, but that what was needed (I did not need to remember now a script that I read over 30 years ago )
Nothing special- the brain adapts to what is needed.
I met hotel congierge that, after more than six years, still remembered my name and face- and they see thousands of people each year
German? I learned it from books and cassettes, then met a German woman in Amsterdam… and stopped using German after we split, few years later
But eventually it was useful- I accepted to work on some projects in Switzerland, and my local partner did oversell my language skills.
So, a banking customer at the end of the first meeting on a project gave me a huge document containing what they wanted to do… in German, of course
At the end of the day I came back… with a list of points that I found not coherent or required clarification
My secret? The brain remembered the structure of the language, and as a safeguard… I had bought one of the first automated translation softwares- the best 200 USD investment
The translation was useless, but at least each word was translated in seconds, and was faster than checking on the dictionary
Then, I applied my knowledge of the subject and the language structure to “decode” the meaning.
Checking only once in a while, when the translation really did not make any sense.
Again- I was helped by Latin, as in that language too I learned in few months to translate, by imitating the bilingual books.
I do not know if it is just in Italy- say you have to read Caesar.
No way that you can learn enough Latin in few months.
Those booklets have the phrase in Latin, with a second line translated word-by-word, and a third line with the phrases arranged into something that makes sense in Italian (maybe also switching words).
I kept applying in my mind the same method with every new language (without writing it down- too lazy…), and it keeps working
So, I started soon being able to attend meetings whose official language was English, but when somebody got upset… switched to German.
Not too long after than, a senior manager from the customer told me (in Italian, while nobody with Italian language skills was around): I think that you understand German better than we think; and I said my usual line: I learn language as much as needed to understand and be able t communicate with the customer.
But I never had time to recover properly my German: too much work to spend time on learning each version of Swiss German (Basel, Bern, Zurich), plus recover high German.
Or I was just lazy: English + understanding German were enough; plus, the official working language in my activities was supposed to be English
The end result? A couple of years ago I met some German girls… and said that my German had a Zurich accent
In mid-1990s, I found myself in a position where I needed to use Latvian to communicate- and I picked up Latvian fast (colloquial Latvian: never learned how to write it).
And when, in 2007, I started again using my draugiem.lv membership (I had been invited few years before), I started getting messages in Latvian.
And once in a while some words were easy to understand- again, my brain remembered more than I expected
When, in March 2008, I decided to definitely settle in Belgium, as finally I was almost able to close my activities, I started playing with the only national language that I did not know- Dutch.
If you want- if you know English fairly well, and understand at least a little bit of German, you can quickly start understand the basics.
And then, it is matter of doing the usual game: read, listen to radio and movies, and… dump yourself in situations where you have no other options: use the language or else
Well, with Dutch is tough: most Dutch speaking people, in Belgium or The Netherlands, have at least some English (usually, quite good English).
Talk to anybody in The Netherlands using few words in Dutch but with an English-oriented mistake here and there… and they will talk in English.
So, it is really tough
But I decided also to recover my Latvian- and discovered that Russian is not that far away from Latvian.
Moreover- I never met a Latvian in Brussels, but once I was in a bar, and I saw a Czech, a Polish, and few Hungarians talking together, first in French+English, and eventually… switching to Russian (everybody over 30 seems to be speaking at least some Russian).
So, as I said to some Latvian friends, I decided to start my “playing around” with Russian, and to study the basics in January and February (and again now).
But I had my first test few months ago, when I ended up exchanging few words in Russian with some Polish or Russian, by instinct.
And the other day I discovered something funny.
Long, long ago (in late 1980s, when I met the first Japanese on a business trip in London), I started being interested in Asian languages, as their structure seemed so different from the European one.
Despite buying books, and starting to learn Kanji and Hiragana+Katakana, and the culture and business approaches, I never went past few tourist phrases.
But when, in mid-1990s, I was studying in the Summer in London… I had Japanese classmates, and my memory of their culture and few words were enough to break the ice.
Once in a way I have a look at the English-Japanese pictorial dictionary over my desk, but I never really moved on (I know no Japanese in Brussels).
As part of my Russian learning, I started playing with hand-written Russian, and, by instinct, my right hand picked up the pen, and started copying the cyrillic handscript.
Before having the left hand doing the
On Easter, I was rearranging my books, and into my hands came a book on “self-study course in official script”, that I bought long ago.
I opened it at the first test page, and tried to replicate the basic strokes.
Not perfect- but almost like the original, at the first test: and both with the right and the left hand.
So, it seems, learning Russian handwriting helped to re-activate something in my brain about duplicating pictures.
I remember that, as a kid, I enjoyed (and did also for classmates) copying maps or creating new ones, just by looking at the original. But I never did it again.
Will I learn Chinese as well? Why not. But, frankly, for the time being I will just exercise the “copy characters” part- it is relaxing, as it probably does not use the same part of the brain used for language
Talking Chinese? Well, as with Latvians… I know no Chinese in Brussels. But I remember that their tonal system is different.
I think that, for the time being, I have enough trouble in uttering the proper sounds in in Dutch and Russian
But there is a catch: over the last 23 years, I have been working and living in different countries and with people from different countries.
So… I ended up knowing some words in all the languages, some only in others, and some just in a couple (usually- that language plus English).
It is funny- but I met other people with the same issue.
You end up… thinking in your own language
If you want, your own variation of Esperanto (incidentally- Zamenhof used the languages he knew to create it 
)
