burntcopper | clearly I absorbed more than I thought...

over here, there's a multi-lingual fic, Babel, where Rodney starts communicating in a mix of languages. And I understood most of it, or it took me two seconds to figure out by context.

I knew I retained more German and French than I could ever speak, and my reading has always been better than my ability to speak languages - but huh. Factor in working out by context/similar words and you've got me raising an eyebrow. Clearly reading all those away messages at work is widening my vocabulary. I knew it'd got to the point where I could identify languages from a single sentence - it's normal at work to have people going 'does anyone know what this says?' because you kind of need to distinguish whether it's a 'back on this date' or a 'so-and-so no longer works here' for purposes of marking up for saving or deleting - since I did a 'That's Swedish, says he's out of office and back on the 25th.' to David yesterday, and then blinked a bit over the fact that I'd not even blinked on translation or ID'ing the language.

And yes, I get a tad frustrated that my unconscious self retained more latin than my conscious self did. (for those who haven't heard this story, apparently I speak Latin when I'm asleep. When I'm not doing that thing where I stop breathing for a couple of minutes.)