What foreign language(s) have you learned in school?

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My native language is French, but I did essentially all of my education (K through grad school) in English with one exception (Grade 1). I was enrolled in ESL classes from roughly Grade 2 until Grade 4. Obviously after that I had regular English 'language arts' classes in school.

I took French as my 'second language' from Grade 4 until Grade 11. Not that I needed it, nor did I learn anything useful, but it was always a ridiculously easy (too easy) grade. I also took French as my 'second language' for the IB Diploma.

I took Spanish for three years in university (6 courses in total), i.e. the full Spanish curriculum in undergrad. I hadn't taken any Spanish courses before that, except for a joke 'Spanish exploratory' half-semester course in grade 6 which I don't remember anything about.

I took 'Arabic Culture' in elementary school in Saudi Arabia. Part of it involved learning Arabic language, although it wasn't really a language course and more of a silly waste of time mandated by the Saudi government for international schools.

I had a pretty intensive German class when I was in Grade 1 in Munich. I did well, but since it was only for one year and over 20 years ago, I don't remember much.

[Хahar 🤔]

I took six years of Spanish, from seventh grade to twelfth grade. I was always one of the best students in the class in terms of actually picking up the language. Today I can read Spanish fairly well and understand it well enough if it's spoken reasonably slowly.

I took Russian my last four semesters of college, which was five years ago at this point. I was very much the best student in all of those classes, and in 2016 I could (and did) absolutely carry on a conversation in Russian, but that's atrophied pretty quickly since I haven't had much occasion to stay in practice.

[JoeInator]

Italian from 7th to 11th grade and, well, that's it.

[Technocracy Timmy]

Took 3 years of French in high school because I thought all of the hot girls took French. Brain dumped 90% of what I learned since it’s not spoken much in southern California.

[Hope For A New Era]

I studied French in high school. I have an exceptional gift for pronunciation and a total inability to learn grammar, so hearing me speak it is...interesting. I sound like a native speaker doing caveman-speak.

[LAKISYLVANIA]

Dutch (actually quite good in it, even for being a native)
English (sucked in it at school, but good in it when i have to use it: esp. writing & reading)
French (pretty good at school, but suck in it when i have to use it)
German (briefly - one year)

I usually had around 80% for french, while 50-60% for english. Problem was, i really didn't like the British accent we were being teached (while I speak basically like a real American, people notice my american accent quickly, sometimes even asking if i'm american lol), and I also didn't like the teachers (pretty bland). The english textbooks & word lists were also awful, while in french it was much more structured. I learned french at a much earlier age.

I did suck in english too until like 2016 I believe when i joined my first english forum. I quickly improved the level of my english in six months. Before that, i mostly knew english from the games I played, because few games are playable in dutch. I also now mainly prefer the english wiki over the dutch one. It feels natural now to think in english.

In 2019 when I finished secondary education at an exam center in Brussels, i had a better result for my french exam than my english one. I didn't learn for both exams (basically 11th and 12th grade in one exam while not learning). My english oral exam was better than the french one, and I made mistakes in structuring what I said (like ending it properly), so it could've been higher. I was surprised by my results for french, overexceeding expectations. My dutch oral & writing was both just 50. And if i had below 50, i would've failed, but I didn't read a single book, while you had to read three books (huge risk i took but was lucky since it accounted for 34% for the test, so basically had 50/66 unless they were too dumb to realize i didn't read them). 33% of it was debating, i probably saved my ass with excellent debating skills and I know I trusted on them.

Weirdly, i did follow a much more difficult study direction, and had to do two year-in-one. (without reading a single textbook, but by using summaries online. In a group dedicated to it, they had also entire cursuses of all subjects for free (only available for 40 euro per subject, but people spread them online). And I used that for maths.

In 10th grade, i had 3 exams for one year, failed all of them, lowest being 14%. In 11th and 12th grade I had 1 exam for two years building further on what was taught in 10th grade and I passed. But I saved my ass thanks to getting the full 20% dedicated to statistics.

I don't think i've ever made a single mistake on a statistics test, which is in weird contrast with functions ( logarithmic functions & goniometric ones, really).

I passed all other tests very easily. History, easy. Geography easy. Human sciences, easy '(and fun). Culture sciences easy. Nature sciences less easy and thought it was going to be very bad but passed it thanks to biology while i probably failed for both chemistry and physics, but made up for it by running up to the maximum for biology.

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I did Spanish in primary school and French in secondary school. I don't really remember much from either although the French is probably fresher because I did it more recently.

I also did Greek (modern) lessons seperately from school for 5 years when I was younger, it didn't help me much conversationally (most of my fast dwindling conversational Greek comes from my family which is more dialectal) but I can read and write in the Greek alphabet which is a nice skill to have.

[Mexican Wolf]

1 year of French in grade school.
3 years of Latin in 7th through 9th grade.
4 years of Spanish in high school, 2 semesters of Spanish in college (one in freshman year, one in senior year).

[LAKISYLVANIA]

A quality of me is that I visualize every word i read in my head (imagination), so I can remember how words are written extremely good. I have trouble learning the words & expanding my vocabulary as well as grammar from non-germanic languages. German has that der / die / das / die rule and others which makes it harder than english or dutch. Other germanic languages have that too. In our sayings, we still see remnants of older dutch using that too, but now we don't anymore.

I was usually - not to say always - the best in my class or school for spelling words. It's creepy how good i'm at. We held the "Great Annual Dutch Dictation". I followed it at home once, and participated in it, only to find out if i actually participated, i would've actually won, which is actually ridicilous.

I have the same skill in other languages too... for german, english, spanish, french, but even languages like finnish, hungarian, estonian, polish, swedish or even romanized korean, romanized japan and romanized russian - as long i have read the words at least once (carefully?)

For film titles, i know their title, original title if foreign language and also year of release from all movies i've watched or seen on IMDb once? It's madness, so...

let me try

bom yeoreum gaeul gyeoul geurigo bom... lol i just visualize it or

tulitikkutehtaan tytto with two points on last o but don't know how to use that on keyboard

or for volcanoes

eyjafjallajokull, again two points on  o

It sounds so easy but i just have strong visualization...

A psychologist once did a test. She did let me see a figure, took it away and after 30 minutes i had to paint that picture with a pencil and I was caught by surprise, saying I forgot but little by little everything came back when I started to visualize / imagine it back. I exactly recreated it (even though it was very complex). So i think I have excellent photographic memory but i'm not always aware / conscious of it.

My dreams are heavily visual as well, but also very abstract and otherworldly. I also often feel like my daydreams are much more interesting than RL, because of the strong visual aspect, lack of physical or mental boundaries, being unrestrained, and the endless number of possibilities to choose from, sometimes using them to anticipate and simulate certain things that could happen or could have happened.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

Since Laki started talking about spelling abilities, here is the famous Welsh village of Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch completely spelled down from memory.