I would not exactly call it a talent, but more perhaps a hobby.

It all began when I passed my school exam and entered the high school It was there that we had foreign languages on he plan, the first and only being French. Not that was my choice, but it was the choice of the British school system and so I learnt French for the first five years of my high shool life. I found it was not such a bad thing, to speak and understand another language. I was not perfect, but somehow a fire began to burn in my brain.

After three years of French, German was also a choice and so there I was leaning the language. Spanish was also a choice at school, but not for my class, so I decided to lean Spanish at evening clssses once a week, which I did for two years. What I really wanted to learn was Italian. My school days were over and I enrolled in an Italian class. And then my lifetime ambition cristllised and yes, I enrolled in a Russian course. We had a great teacher, a Czech, but her Russian was perfect and I stayed in her course for 12 years. Of course this was many years ago. I was then in Switzerland so was leaning my Russian from a teacher who spoke German with us – no problem. I then had so many languages revolving in my head that one or two more was not a great problem.

As you can see, I collected quite a lot of literature. After my many years of Russian I would write and read the cyrillic alphabet. My first text books for the Russian language were based on the Soviet Union as it was then called and then things changed and we got new more modern books on the Russian language without being Soviet. I was so happy, a long time wish was achhieved speaking Russian. The main problem was I could not speak Russian with others, as I knew no Russians to practice with. However since being invaded in Switzerland with many refugees from the Ukrain who mainly spoke Russian I had the oppotunity to use my Rusian knowledge.

This was not enough for my quest for languages, and so what did I do. I enrolled for an evening class to learn Arabic. However, after a year I leaft this course. I could then eventually read and write Arabic, but there were too many dialects involved and I discovered that even the countries speaking Arabic did not always understand each other. Oh, and by the way you can see a book to learn Turkish in my collection. Also an idea of mine, but it remained an idea.

Today with my 79 years I can still read and write Russian cyrillic, but no longer so much. I was 40 years old when I began to learn the languge. Today I can basically speak english, my mother tongue, french which is useful in Switzerland and Italian as we have many Italian speaking in Switzerland. I have not forgotten my Russian, but I have lack of practice and my Arabic is almost non existent, but I have a general knowledge of the grammatical formation.

The subject here is actually Talent, so am I telented? Not really, just persistent with a thirst for knowledge of foreign languages. An example was when we decided to go to Portugal or a holiday. I spent a couple weeks learning the basics of the language, although not a great achievement. The main word I remember today was “formica” meaning ant, as ants seem to be the main insect in Portugal. They were everywhere.

So now I say До свидания