Spent most of today studying Latin, so perhaps some memory about language studies.
In high school I did not have the opportunity to study language (because we were concentrating on science and math). However, I spent a lot of time with grandparents and family friends who spoke, by that time, a Brooklynized version of Italian. At high school graduation I was accepted to Queens College but i could not matriculate until I took two semesters over the summer of a foreign language. When it came time to register I had planned to enroll in Italian, unfortunately the Italian class was closed out. I then went to the Spanish line and found that was also closed out, the same for French All the romance languages were gone. There were only two languages open to enroll in. One was Russian and the other German. I was so disappointed. I figured that Russian was another alphabet so i enrolled in German. Unfortunately when I got to class I found that the other 6 students in this abbreviated German class were all of German descent. While I was trying to learn to count to 10 and distinguish between der , die and das the others were reading Kafka's Metamorphesus. Needless to say my grades were abysmal. My first two earned college grades were D and D-. I was not off to a good start, but since i "passed" i was able to matriculate!
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