I moved this to chat, as I never saw any lace as I was growing up.
I was fortunate that I was born on the border between the Netherlands and
Germany: the end of the street was Germany.
I grew up speaking three languages: Dutch, German and Limburgs (which is
more german than dutch).
However, I did not get any formal language teaching until moving to
secondary at 12, by which time we had moved to Brabant,
Dutch, German, English and French were all compulsary till the age of 16 -
and did not like it, preferring subjects like
maths, geogrpahy and history.
After leaving school at 16, I joined the army at 17, and studied for my
A-level equivalents, and guess what?
I choose English and French (as well as Dutch) as 2 of my 6 subjects, and
then went on to do a teaching degree in English language.
Good job I married an Englishman and moved to UK in 1978, where I have been
teaching languages ever since to English people, immigrants,
assylum seekers etc. Nowadays only PT, just to keep my toes in.
Agnes Boddngton - Elloughton UK
>Susan Hottle wrote:
"I still marvel at how many Europeans use more than two languages! Fluent
in two& can get by in a couple more!!"
Pene Piip wrote
This is because in Europe the school curriculum dictates that a student
learns the mother tongue& two other languages. This is compulsory!
In Soviet times the schools in Estonia taught Russian, as well as German&
Estonian.
Now students learn Estonian with English as first 2nd language& then they
can choose between Russian, German,& recently French. Other languages are
offered at Tertiary Level.
But I don't understand why Russian people don't seem to know English! The
country is one of the competitors in the Eurovision Song Contest but not a
member of the EU!
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