Did you learn a second language in school growing up?

[JapanGuy]

Where I grew up, it was traditional to learn French in elementary school. Unfortunately, I didn't have any passion for it at the time. It was just another subject, but I tried to do well in it. Looking back now, I learned a lot of vocabulary and I wish I would have remembered more! It didn't help that I would go on to learn Spanish later and it ended up erasing a lot of the French I learned. Looking back, there was a French Immersion program at the school too. You could take most of your main courses using French. I thought that sounded really difficult a long time ago, but I think it would have been good for my mind to be bilingual at an early age.

[EsperantoOnline]

What a coincidence, just today I was looking back at some old high school notebooks and found that I had a French class where I did okay enough to get a little grasp of the language. It's a shame I never continued learning it because I was mostly interested in spanish which I feel pretty confident speaking even without the "American" accent. 

I've heard about how some studies have found that people who grow being bilingual have a better brain development and can actually solve problems better than those who never learn at least a second language. While I don't agree completely with it, it's true that people with at least two languages have more options as to where to live and they can also look for more jobs. How are your japanese studies going? Are you fluent enough to hold a conversation with a Japanese?

[Heda]

Czech is my native language, my second one was English and the third one German..now I am learning Spanish but not in school anymore

[lushlala]

It appears a lot of people had similar experiences while learning English! English is Botswana's official language and it's taught from early on, right from nursery school. Even though Setswana is my native and first language, I grew up in an English speaking household. However, I too experienced being taught English by incompetent teachers whose pronunciation was way off and their grasp of the English language left a lot to be desired. I found myself always locked in an argument with them, correcting and teaching them, instead of the other way around. That happened a lot in state schools. I think it's got better now though, which is a huge relief

[Paula]

I actually learned English in school when I was growing up and the truth is that for not being a native speaker I write and speak English pretty well. I think this is the best way to learn a language, as we grow older it becomes more difficult, at least for me. I’ve been taking French lessons for two years now and I’m still in a beginner level. I have a lot of trouble understanding French people speak, the accent is so smooth and they speak so fast that even if I know the words I don’t get them. This does not happen with English, I can even imitate different accents and understand every single word, no matter who’s speaking.