I suppose it all began when I moved over to Switzerland at the age of 20 from England. Other languages had always been a fascination, and so I arrived in a country with four official languages, although living in Zürich for the first two years, it was just German, actually Swiss German – they have their own dialect.

I moved over to Solothurn, again German speaking, but just half an hour away from where French was spoken. Eventually I got married (to a Swiss) and had children who became more or less bilinual, although the main spoken language at home was Swiss German.

I then decided to complete my dream of learning Russian. Not an easy language, but I can still write cyrillic and read it. I learnt for 10 years. Somehow on the way I picked up Italian and French I learnt (although not perfect) for five years in my school days. On the way I did 2 years arabic, coiuld read and write it, but it was really very difficult (too many dialiects according to which country it was spoken) and not much is left. I also found a book on learning Tukish in my language cupboard, but that was a short lived episode.

Today I am glad when I am understood, although German and English are now my basic languages.

I seem to have become an incorrigible language student.