Originally posted by Dave Lenton:
I'm sure I've only got one spare "slot" in my brain for a foreign language. I've found that since starting learning Greek, I've forgotten all my French. Whenever I try to think of a French word for something, the Greek pops up instead. Yesterday I realised that I can't even remember enough to ask "how old are you". It made me think - at what point does a lack of knowledge of a language decrease to the point where you can no longer say you "know" the language?
It's normal, if you don't practise a language, you forget it. I studied German for 4 years, and i can t remember how to say how old are you, wie alt bist du?, i can remember aproximately

. However, because you ve already learned it, next time it will take you 2 times less effort to relearn it. Especially if you go to that country, it will just pop back in after a few weeks. And anyway, the other important thing is that people appreciate the effort of you learning their language, and this is specially true for some eu countries.