"DirtCrashr" wrote in message
...
"Qwerty" wrote:

...... she went back to Russia, a
very old lady, and found, after a lifetime of living in England and only
speaking English that she could no longer remember how to speak Russian.

Maybe the spoken, colloquial, Russian had changed. Among other things
a lot of "Comarad" this-and-that back then, with a lot of whispering
and suspicion. Trotsky had been assassinated and maybe it wasn't safe
to be a former secretary, no matter how old...

No, the memory channels get blocked, especially with age. I knew a girl who
emigrated with her parents from Switzerland at age 8 and returned at age
18 - had togo to language classes to get her German back.

I had worked in Madrid long enough to become fluent in Spanish; moved to
Switzerland and, after about ten years, had a project in Spain. When I got
there and tried to speak Spanish, only German came out; took me two days to
get back to being able to communicate again and it was never with my old
fluency. Then when I had to answer the phone from head office, had trouble
to switch back to German. Some people have great talent with languages
(definitely not me) but it helps to start young and to keep practicing.

Regards,

Q.