A younger versions of myself had a reasonable (School boy) grasp of German that I'd learnt whilst living in the country as an even younger schoolboy. As school progressed I moved onto French, as was the way, and was the only person in my class to get a GCSE. I was in the first school year to take GCSE's and so did a mix of both O levels and GCSE's. Guess which one was easier? (I'm not going to get onto that subject). The point of this post is to highlight how bad I am at speaking another language even when I know the words.
Ham radio seems centred on English, which in itself isn't a problem as it's a language that is fairly common in business as well. But what is a problem is my inability to conduct simple QSO's in something other than my mother tongue. A comment by Julian, G4ILO on a earlier post reminded me that I am still a poor operator. I rarely greet or converse in French during a QSO, which I could manage. I don't think I've every said good bye to a German in German and occasionally sign off to an Italian with the correct language.
I know it's not New Year but I think its time to start early on this one. A neighbour of mine speaks little English mainly French, Spanish, German and Quechua (I'd be very surprised if I manage a QSO with a native Quechua speaker unless it's my neighbour) so I've starting having very broken conversations in French to start with, here's hoping that some of this will rub off on me when I'm having a QSO with a European neighbour and forcing the British way of slow and loud English on him or her.
Sorry for being so rubbish at speaking your language
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