Well, I see the knights in shining armor have been out for a spin... ;0)
I was taken aback just a tad, because, as Hydra correctly noted, I was simply saying it can be done. I don't consider myself terribly "exceptional" amongst this crowd, but then, we really don't know much about each other at all.
To answer your query, Hydra, I followed the standard US route to learning a "language other than English", beginning in (brace yourselves for a major dating of myself...) Junior High (7th grade), taking Spanish 2 or 3 days a week. I don't know if it became daily in 8th, or in High School, 9th. I took it through 11th, and my senior year I was an exchange student to Chile for a year. I really would like to write a book about that when I have the time... I found that the schooling I'd received was inadequate, but I don't blame the schooling. I don't think it's possible to become totally comfortable speaking a 2nd (or 3rd, etc.) language with native speakers without being immersed in some fashion at some point. After about 3 months I was quite conversant, but working still on my accent and rolling my "r"s (I spent hours physically dragging the sensation from the back of my throat up across the palate to right behind my teeth. Most people would not bother, but I really wanted to be able to do it correctly!) After about 6 months I was mistaken for a local. I have a great story about that, if anyone is interested.
Pook, I have to bust ya! The lisping king story is just another "urban legend". You can easily see that it makes no sense when you understand that the "ceceo", as it's called, only occurs with the following phonemes: ce, ci, za, ze, zi, zo, zu. It does not occur with the letter "s", which a person with a lisp would do. What's funny is that in Chile, they never referred to themselves as speaking "espanol", but rather, "castellano", yet they did not have the "ceceo" in their speech.
Zed: Did you ever experience a situation where one of your friendly translators began to speak in heavily accented English, but you were expecting Spanish, and you didn't get it at all? Or the other way around, where s/he said something in Spanish but you were expecting English? That's what I was referring to for myself. I occasionally overhear people speaking Spanish in public, and if I attend, then the person switches suddenly to English, I am momentarily lost until my brain figures it out...
Thank you for the apology, Faldage. I wasn't trying to prove anything. And believe me, I'll hold off on that activity in these forums for quite a while... he he he :0)
