English is my native language. My father is a grammar junkie and so am I, but I've learned to bite my tongue.

I am close to functional in French. I can read anything at close to the speed I read English. I can understand spoken French in a couple different dialects, but I'm slower than when I read -- only in the last couple years have I been able to keep up with a random francophone radio station, even the overly pronounced Prèmiere Chaine (Channel One of Radio-Canada) or France Info. I can speak French conversationally, but not well enough to keep up a business conversation. In the DELF, I'm about a B1/B2 borderline.

I can also read some Dutch and Russian: I studied each for a year, then went to the Netherlands and Belgium a couple times (oh, and I live in West Hollywood east of Fairfax, where most store signs are in Cyrillic).

I can also read Spanish, but I never studied it formally and can barely understand conversations on the bus. I don't flinch at reading Portuguese or Italian, but that doesn't mean I should translate what I just read -- I studied those informally. I lived in Boston for a dozen years, where Brazilians go to earn money and Portuguese is more common than Spanish by a long shot.

French is my big tasty, especially Quebecois French. Innovation in the French language only happens with hood rat kids in the burnt-out suburbs of French cities ("un produit des banlieues", as I saw on one kid's tee shirt in 2008) and the marketing linguists in Montreal. The latter gave us "magasiner" (to shop) instead of "faire du shopping" and "pourriel" (poubelle (eponym for a trash can) + courriel (email)) instead of "le spam". Quebecois French wants to kick English's ass back across the Outaouais; French in France gave up the fight.

I didn't like French for a long time. I just kept getting stuck in French classes in high school and college. Then I took my first adult trip to Montreal at age 23 and fell in love.