TheStrayCat wrote:From my experience, even if you've taken a long break from learning a language, your knowledge comes back nevertheless in a few days after you get back to it.
I want to share a different experience. When still at high school I participated in an exchange program with a Swedish school, and before going to Sweden I had studied quite a lot of Swedish so I could communicate and understood a lot when I went there (I was around B1).
Now, some 15 years later, I don't remember
anything. I can only say "tack så mycket" and "jag kan inte talar svenska", that's it.
That said, I have never tried to reactivate it. Maybe the knowledge would come back fast.
TheStrayCat wrote:but which has little practical use to me except enjoying its weird grammar
It is weird indeed. After 5 years of studying it it keeps surprising me.
(I know Vijay would say it's typologically pretty standard and super easy, unlike maybe some Amerindian or Papuan languages, but hey Vijay, we are just humans unlike you.
).
Just yesterday I asked my Russian-speaking Turkish friend to translate this into Turkish:
Меня не за что ругать. (There is nothing I should be reprimanded for), lit. me no for what reprimand.
He came up with this:
Benim kızılacak bir şeyim yok, lit. My will-be-reprimanded a my-thing there-is-no.
Isn't the sentence structure great?