How many languages can you speak? Which languages can you read or understand?
1. I speak English okay.
2. I can swear in Spanish and otherwise speak Sesame Street Spanish (count to eleven, know how to say water, open, closed, &c.).
3. When my roommate was talking to his parents in French about the skunks that live under the house, I knew roughly what he was talking about, but not exactly what he was saying.
4. I spoke Romanian for a year when I lived in Romania. I have a great accent but a small vocabulary.
5. Malcolm X's daughter once spoke about the importance of being able to say "Thank You" in the language of any country you visited, so I can say thank you in a few more languages like Turkish, Hungarian, Czeck and maybe, if I remember, Bulgarian.
What took you to Romania?
Posted by: axesandalleys | 09/15/2006 at 08:41 AM
My then-husband had a job teaching political science to college kids as part of the Civic Education Program. I got a wifey-type job teaching comptuer skills to Romanian journalists, back when the Internet was gopher and archie and pine. We lived there for a year. There are a few photos up on Flickr. This was in 1994-1995.
Posted by: jessamyn | 09/18/2006 at 06:05 PM