First I'd like to say that I have an ancestor that was full blood German but he never spoke German. His parents were naturalized and documented immigrants.

When I was in college, I tried to barter my way out of learning another language. Well, you wont get it, if you don't ask. I tried to get out of Art/Music appreciation too because of the many hours spent in music lessons. I lost both arguments but won another one.

Anyway, I had taken Latin in high school and I didn't want to waste time and money for another language. During this process, the department head told me about a student, which had just returned from an exchange program in Germany. He was there for 6 months and he was having a hard time communicating in English. He said, the student had forgotten a lot of his English vocabulary. Noticably, common words like toaster or desk top. Also, he said the student would revert back to German, in mid sentence and not even notice what he had done. Well, we have the same thing happen down here and we call it Tex-Mex. Many fluent and educated bi-linguals communicate like this in TX. Often there is a lengthy translation for a single word, therefore, it's just better to switch over so nothing gets lost in the translation.

Following my barting ordeal, I ended up in a language class. My language professor told me about his friend's wife, which had come to him for help. She was a military brat and was born in Germany but returned to the states around age 8. She had recently had a problem getting through Customs because she was asked to say something in German. She waited over two hours and was finally able to say some very simple phrases. At one time, she was a fluent speaker of German.

Also, during my time at the university, I met a German that had been living in America, since he was 10 years old. He also forgot how to speak German and he could not test out of German for credit. He actually ended up taking his native language for credit.

All of this leads to a point I would like to make, which is that immersion works really well. You have to immerse yourself in a language to really learn it. In essence, sending people to language class is futile, if they are not properly exposed to the language and willingly use it on a day to day basis. America has wasted a lot of money pretending to teach people English because they have not cast off their old language, long enough to absorb English. People will always take the path of least resistance.

Also, if you don't use it, you will loose it. In fact, I can't even speak a complete sentence in Latin but my class was paid for by tax payers and I received credit for the course. I went through the process but have nothing to show for it. I'm sure many people required to take an English course, have ended up with little understanding or the ability to use the language. They might as well have taken Latin.

The moral is, if you cast off your first language, you will surely learn a new one.

Dixie