Yes, but on the strangest things. I used my German to translate some old Volkswagen repair instructions for a mechanic and to find out about a very obscure east Asian cigar.
Ehh… Does teaching yourself count, 'cause that’s the case with me and German.
Well, to answer, no, not really, aside from a few chatroom visits and a conversation or two. Frustratingly basic, since my German’s almost fluent; I think in the language a lot. I write my journal in the language, too, for privacy concerns and am an avid, slobbering reader of German literature.
I had studied French on my own before I actually went to France and got to use it in Cannes, which was nice. I could never really understand why so many people claimed the French were rude to Americans because I found that they were incredibly nice to those of us [in my tour group] who didn’t treat them as if they were freaks for not speaking English.
Then I took a semester of French in high school [gaaah, i dropped the class because we got to “je voudrais acheter un stylo” around christmas break and i was bored out of my mind] and got to use it in – get this – Epcot at Disney World when I started a conversation with one of the workers who was originally from Nice. It was pretty funny – we were chatting about random things and all of my friends were standing around looking at me like I’d lost my mind.
5 years of French, I’m pretty good, but not fluent, my reading and writing is better than my speech.
3 years German, I speak quite nicely, but the same applies.
Simple tourist phrases (where is the…/ how much does it cost…/when is this open etc) in Spanish, Greek and Italian.
2 or 3 words (please/ thankyou/ yes/ no) of Czech, Finnish, Norwegian, Maltese and Polish.
5 years of Latin and 1 of ancient Greek…not exactly useful, but I enjoyed it.
Basically, I have a good brain for languages, can do accents pretty well, and try to pick something up from every holiday or from friends who speak other languages.
It is MUCH easier to ask for directions in the language of the country you’re visiting (or one of it’s neighbours) than to waste time trying to find someone who speaks English.
Japanese: all day, every day. Pity I’m not any better at it.
French: Sometimes at work, more often when talking with my aunts and uncles.
German: Only once since taking a year of it in college 12 years ago, and that was last week with a Japanese guy who had worked for two years at Daimler-Chrysler in Germany. Our German conversation mainly consisted of drunkenly slurring “I don’t speak much German,” laughing, then switching back to Japanese.
English:
well, live in ireland so yes…
French:
hate having to speak it, but coulkd manage if I had to
german:
never had to use it, really…
Spanish:
came in handy that time in the Canaries…
I took French for years back in elementary and high school, but never really had an opportunity to use it until just last week, when I attended a French screening of Polanski’s “The Pianist” in a theatre here in Budapest. (I had no idea the film was going to be dubbed into French instead of screened in the original English.) To my delight, I found I was able to understand absolutely everything. At the end of the movie, the girl sitting next to me started speaking to me in French, but I found myself utterly unable to talk back. It seems I have retained my understanding, but my speaking skills are almost completely lost.
When I first arrived here, I didn’t speak any Hungarian, so I had to communicate with acquaintances and my landlady in German, which I had been learning for about a year beforehand. My cousin and her husband, who also live here, speak Spanish, so I sort of fused my recollection of French and my Sesame Street knowledge of Spanish to produce vaguely Spanish-sounding dialogue, and we are thus able to communicate.
Wow…I figured I could open this thread and jump on the “Yeah, I’ve never used it either!” bandwagon. Apparently my skills are going to waste.
Not that I have any great skills; I took Spanish for maybe six years in elementary and junior high as an extracurricular program, then my obligatory years in high school and college. I could carry on a conversation, but they would have to speak slower than normal and pardon all my bad grammar. I’d be able to understand them far better than they would understand me…
Only real chance to use it was when I went to Costa Rica when I was fourteen, and that trip was organized by the guy who was leading our extracurricular class. Other than that, I’ll show off by using the Spanish directions instead of the English, along with various other random events. I suppose something is to be said for the fact that I can communicate in another language, even if I don’t.
Yesterday I used my french skills, I live in northern NY. I had to give directions to a few people who didn’t speak any english.
Every couple days to keep in practice I talk to a few friends who only speak french and I’m always trying to read french websites and IRC channels.
Spanish – I can read the advertising in the spanish-speaking parts of town and occasionally pick up bits of spanish dialog in movies abd TV shows. Sometimes useful, sometimes useless in real-life situations.
Latin – Really helped on a Classical Studies trip, occasionally in work on mythology, but my Latin’s really rusty.
Polish – had to study this in grammar school. Badly taught, and it hasn’t been very useful.
Japanese – tried to self-teach. Useful for impressing the heck out of Japanese friends and business people – as long as they don’t talk to me for more than 5 seconds (I speak Japanese at the “Shogun” level. That is, after all this time and study, I speak it as well as if I’d learned it all by simply watching the TV miniseries “Shogun”.) It gives them the impression I’m making an effort to learn their language.
Think I’ve used French 3 times since high school. Like several others have mentioned, my ability to read French far surpasses my current abiliity to form any sort of coherent sentence using it.
French: 3 years in high school – I can make myself understood in the present and passe compose (My bad french joke: je n’ai pas du futur en France) and I have wielded this skill (in the manner of an axe or cudgel) in France, Spain, and Quebec without too much mockery resulting. I stick to pretty basic communication in French though.
Russian: 3 years in college. Used it a bit when I spent 7 weeks in Bulgaria. The crowning glory of that was when my group made “amercan-style brunch” for the kitchen workers and they were showing me where to peel potatoes and I said in Russian “It is not necessary for us to peel the potatoes” – a sentence that uses the dative case! – and the kitchen lady understood me perfectly! (although she thought it was odd not to peel the potatoes). I must say it was a thrill.
English- Learned it well enough to study at an university in the US. Although I wish my language classes (12 years of at least 4 hours per week of classwork) had included Southernese…
It could be argued that my six years of high school English come in handy, what with an American girlfriend and this message board and all.
My 5 years of high school German mean that I speak it reasonably well, although not grammatically perfect. I can speak it on both a business and leisure level, though. Most of the times, these skills are used to help out pleasantly surprised tourists. You’d be amazed at how many Germans switch to English when here, as if they’re embarassed about their nationality. I like making them feel at ease: after all, it’s the horrible The Scorpions-English they ought to be embarrassed about, not their mother tongue.
I speak enough French to get by, had 6 years of high school lessons. But BOY does that language get rusty when you don’t get much use. I still do OK when skiiing in France, but my French was a lot better when I just finished high school, 12 years ago now. [sub]Yikes! 12 years??[/sub]
My Spanish is rudimentary and self-taught. It helped me on my vacation in Mexico, but I was also glad most of the people spoke a little English as well.
I’m thinking of taking Spanish courses. It’s such a beautiful language.