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But having learned Latin and French, I can usually get by with least some technical documents – well enough to get the gist of what they are saying, anyway, especially if they're in an area where I have some background. A decent dictionary would give me more, of course. The same applies to Portugese, Italian, and Romanian. However, I wouldn't be able to read a newspaper or a novel or anything like that. But unlike you, I don't live in a country where Spanish (or Mexican) is a common spoken language. Neither was it widely available when I was a schoolboy; French, German and Latin were the ones commonly taught, together with classical Greek in some schools. These days, however, you can get all sorts of languages, depending on the school. I gather Mandarin is becoming more common – although I have very little idea of how common.
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