Forgotten languages.

I also must thank Keledec for his response. I tried to read his webpage but its totally in Chinese. I did try to learn Mandarin when I was in college but it was only spoken Mandarin not written characters.

I have mostly forgotten that Chinese official dialec. Two years ago when my plane was in transit in Taiwan, a Chinese lady stopped to ask me directions. All I could say was "Sorry I do not know the way (which I truly did not). Whilst in college I used to even dream in that language. It was also the 'secret' language that my cousin and I used to talk about guys and stuff. Now, like alot of things from my youth its almost forgotten.

Many years ago I was selected to represent my country in an exchange programme to Japan. That was my first experience of travelling abroad. The group comprised of about 20 people and we were given a two week intensive course in the Japanese languiage.....enough for each of us to be able to give a short speech and for basic communication.

I spent over a month in Japan. Attended alot of courses, met many new friends and lived for a time with a nice Japanese family. Now, I have also almost forgotten the language due to not practicing it.

Whenever I visit JAR, I do meet many people who are impressed that I am bilingual. Actually I should be ashamed. I should be able to communicate in many more languages but for the fact that I do not practice doing so.