[Cz-L] All this language stuff

Hello all,
                                                                              
                                         I I was born in Cernauti, although
let's call it Czernowitz. My first language was German (our variant of it),
soon enough I mastered a good understanding of Yiddish (from my
grandparents), some Rutenian from a "domestic worker". Then in the "Meisler" grade
school, Romanian, French, Hebrew, and a more literary German. During the first
Soviet occupation, I went to a Ukrainian Middle School, so I became proficient in
Ukrainian and Russian. During the second Soviet occupation, I went to the
Yiddish Middle School, thus learned to write correct Yiddish. In the meantime I
also started private English lessons.
I spent a year working in Israel, so I am reasonably fluent in Hebrew.
My work in the US led me to various countries. After four months in Brazil,
I became fluent in Portuguese (Ukrainian and Portuguese have now faded). A
year in Venezuela, and I spoke fluent Spanish (now kind of rusty), then
because my wife's family settled in Italy, and I have been there every year for the
last 40 years, I am fluent in Italian. Lately we lived in France part time
for 14 years, so my French is pretty good.
Nu, am I a language maven ? Hell no, I just dabble in all these languages,
dream in Romanian and count obviously in German ,and curse (forgive me people)
in earthy Romanian or Russian. I also spent four months working in Egypt,
but Arabic didn't stick.
Abi gesund,
                                                                      Gerhard
(Bobby) Schreiber
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Received on 2008-01-09 04:21:08