I took German in primary school (0.5 or 1.5 years, I forget which), Spanish and Korean in late primary school/early high school (3 years), French (5 years) and Vietnamese (1 year) in high school. Of these, I can hold a very basic conversation in French and have good enough grammar to put together fairly sophisticated sentences, very slowly, using a dictionary; and can read the Korean script (the same way someone who speaks Turkish but has literally never heard a word of the language can “read English” because their language uses the same script) and barely any more than that, in any of those languages.
I blame the fact that I changed languages so much for my poor skill in all of them. (Though a lack of will or immersion certainly has a fair amount to do with it, too.)
I took German in primary school (0.5 or 1.5 years, I forget which), Spanish and Korean in late primary school/early high school (3 years), French (5 years) and Vietnamese (1 year) in high school. Of these, I can hold a very basic conversation in French and have good enough grammar to put together fairly sophisticated sentences, very slowly, using a dictionary; and can read the Korean script (the same way someone who speaks Turkish but has literally never heard a word of the language can “read English” because their language uses the same script) and barely any more than that, in any of those languages.
I blame the fact that I changed languages so much for my poor skill in all of them. (Though a lack of will or immersion certainly has a fair amount to do with it, too.)