I took Mandarin Chinese for 3 years in college, in an attempt to get in touch with my roots more. I grew up speaking only English, so it became sort of a missing part of my education that I really wanted to fill.

It was worth doing, and I did well in class, but I never traveled and lived abroad in order to pick it up in context. Therefore, I mostly have forgotten the language I spent a lot of effort to learn.

I’ll probably work on regaining competence again at some point in my life, but it’s a bit too outside of my normal day now.