I’ve been thinking a lot about language lately, specifically foreign languages. And — appropriately enough, with the recent focus on the world’s athletes at the Winter Olympics — I’m fascinated with speakers of foreign languages.

I have a friend here in Colorado who is fluent in six languages, although he says it’s only five because he doesn’t really in Hebrew. Of course, it helps that he has lived — for several years at a time — in The Netherlands, France, Argentina, Italy, Israel, and Cleveland.

Have you heard this old saw?

“What do you call someone who speaks more than one language?” .

“What do you call someone one speaks only one language?” . Hmm…

Seriously, though, how many of us are truly fluent in a language other than English? If we are very lucky, we might have relatives who speak the language of their parents. My sister and I have incorporated select Romanian words and phrases from our mother’s parents into our family lingo, but we don’t actually know the language. And Mom herself got rusty during her 50-some years away from everyday use.

I do love the English language, and I’m in awe that English is international language, which is always inspiring during global events such as the Olympics. With rare exceptions, these athletes are articulate, if not downright fluent, in English. And having briefly trained to teach English as a Foreign Language with the Peace Corps a few years ago, I know firsthand how difficult it is to learn and employ English when it’s not your native tongue.

However, not only did my elementary school students in Turkmenistan speak Turkmen, of course, but they were fluent in Russian too. And many of them, at just six years old, could also understand English so well that I was startled more than once when the kids knew what I was saying to other teachers, such as that we needed more chairs. One little girl who was listening to us promptly took me across the hall where I could get the chairs. But do I have any Turkmen left in me? Not a peep.

I think part of my own monolingual pain is due to a misguided skill for avoiding language education. That’s not entirely my fault, though — I had absolutely no foreign language requirements to get my bachelor’s degree in college. However, I did spend my one semester of Conversational Spanish in high school mostly conversing with the kid across the row from me … in English.

I regret that, a lot. So I’m pleased to see that school kids now have a greater variety of language offerings, even requirements. Personally, I want to learn French — no, more than that, I want to become fluent in French, with perfect pronunciation for even the sounds that my English-speaking tongue can’t produce right now. That’s why I recently purchased a French-language CD set.

But wait …I also went in with my sister on both the Italian and Spanish language sets too. So if you see me apparently talking to myself in the car, you’ll be right, because I’ll be practicing my , my and my

In other words, have a great day, afternoon, and evening … in any language.