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Strategies & Market Trends : The coming US dollar crisis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: dybdahl who wrote (10919)	9/8/2008 6:56:14 PM
From: Elroy Jetson	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71454

If I've been speaking Spanish or French for a number of weeks, when I return to America I'll frequently find fairly common words I can't recall in English, even for a few weeks. The same is true when I initially switch from English. But this is far from a total amnesia. I suspect my Great-Grandmother experienced the same when she was in her nineties and spoke a mixture of seven languages, and only one of her sons was proficient in all seven to be able to consistently understand her. They all became one large vocabulary to her. I don't think she had a complete recall of any one of them, (at any one time) nor was she able to readily distinguish the boundaries between on language and another. I think this is quite different to someone who studies a language for years with top marks and advanced placement, who cannot recognize virtually any words in a sentence, either spoken or when supplied the same sentences in writing - even after examining them for five minutes. She could obviously recall things long enough to take an exam or a final - but I think missed the entire point of studying a language. I studied Latin for two quarters and with the exception of an occasional word I cannot understand virtually any motto or sentence written in Latin. And why should I? I never understood Latin in the first place. I could decode Latin texts with the aid of a dictionary - I probably still can, like a child with a decoder ring. I'm fairly confident this is the level of understanding my niece has of French. It's simply not what I would anticipate after obtaining A grades in French for years. I have a friend with a similar understanding of medicine - practically non-existent after graduating from Johns Hopkins medical school with top grades, so he became an anesthesiologist, a specialty where you don't need to understand much about medicine, after a residency at Harvard. But he eventually lost his medical license because he could no longer even recall much of anything medical, even about anesthesia, resulting in many errors. There seems to be a certain type of "good student" who after years of study never produce any significant understanding of their subject. .