Too much travel

[stickman]

I have been reading some of the old posts about Gaelic language. Unfortunately I am now to old to be able to memorize any new language. During my working life I traveled all over the world. I worked in 50 different countries. None of them were Gaelic speaking. A few were Spanish or Portuguese and I picked up some Spanish. However most of my time was spent in Asia. I averaged 10 months a year in China and learned how to speak Chinese quite well. Learning how to read it was to me impossible. To old for that to soak in. Now after about 25 years I have forgotten most of what I learned. Don’t use it you loose it. I can still get a cold beer but that’s about it. If I had spent more time in Spanish speaking countries I would have been fluent and could have continued to use it. Every place I went I tried to learn how to say at least hello, please and thank you. It was surprising how it broke the ice, so to speak. I used to buy dictionaries in English to whatever and whatever to English. I would hand whoever I was trying to talk to the whatever to English dictionary and we would look up words and show them to each other. Needless to say we had lots of laughs. I never had a bad time any place I went and I went to some really bad places. My scariest time was when I went to Angola when civil war broke out. But that’s a long story. I guess my point is if you are trying to learn Gaelic you must practice it and use it as often as possible.