Let's go a little further. There's a secret to language, and I haven't found it yet - at least not in a way that I can express. But I studied Latin, and seem to be able to pick up Romantic languages (with Latin roots) very easily. And I really know German, so Yiddish and other Germanic languages came to me very naturally.

And I married a Rhode Island woman whose first language was Polish, so I thought I was all set when I went to Poland. Not so - I didn't understand a thing. And when I took her to Poland the next year, she didn't understand much more. She said she forgot it all because she hadn't spoken Polish since she finished high school and moved out of Rhode Island. So, maybe Slavic languages follow different rules.

The only thing Greek helped me with, was learning the Russian alphabet and reading signs in Greece. Couldn't understand a word they said - but sometimes they thought I was German and they addressed me in that language, and then I was fine.

-Joe-