Last night at ukulele club there was a new member from Spain, and I talked a bit with her in Spanish. It’s a long time since I’ve studied any Spanish, and I rarely use it these days, so I thought I’d forgotten most of it, but I found that I can still have a basic conversation, even if I make mistakes. I had similar experiences with German in Berlin last year and the year before at the Polyglot Gathering – I could understand quite a bit and found that when I tried to speak it I could at least make myself understood.
At the moment I have no real need to awaken my Spanish or German, but if I do need them, I’ll try to find ways to bring them back.
How do you brush up, bring back, awaken or revive languages you have forgotten or not used for a long time?
I don’t have a lot of opportunities for conversation, so I listen to languages to brush up. Listening to talk radio usually gets me back into thinking in the language. Movies tend to work even better– a couple of years ago, I hadn’t touched French much in some time, and I ended up watching Monsieur Lazhar, a québécois film. I was thinking and talking in French very fluidly for quite a bit after that! It was really cool, and gave me confidence that I could always bring a language back.
It’s an interesting question. An only semi-facetious answer: after a few bottles of Beck’s, my dormant German is noticeably revived.
That wouldn’t work for a teetotaler like me 🙂