Re: [Cz-L] All this language stuff

Dear Gerhard,
When I tell my English only speaking American friends that I
have a working knowledge of about eight languages, three of them
fluent, and that I can make myself understood in a foreign
country in their language two weeks after being there, they tell
me that I have a special talent. No, I say, it's simple --I'm
 from Czernowitz.
--- GERHARDRODICA_at_aol.com wrote:

> 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 14:14:26