I speak English, and have an acquaintance with Spanish, having lived and worked as a paramedic in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas for twenty years, but I speak no other foreign languages. My parents were Swedish but no one ever spoke Swedish around me while I was growing up. They taught me how to say "thank you" and "you're welcome" in Swedish, just to amuse the grandparents, but that was it. However, I have found that I can watch movies in German or Swedish and have a very good idea as to what is going on and, since I am working at the same time, I am watching the movie only sporadically and don't use subtitles. I have watched several movies in German and there are times that I almost forgot that it was in German. If you asked me to speak German or Swedish, I'd be lost, and I couldn't even translate what was being said in the movie, but I get the gist of it, if that makes any sense to you, enough that I can follow the plot. Between the scenes themselves, the context of the movie, body language, and perhaps some other things that I am not aware of, I don't know word for word what is being said, but I can understand the point of the conversations that are going on. That doesn't work for me with French movies or any of the Asian languages.
@Ken Anderson, I don't know what that is called but I'm sure it's some kind of talent. When my niece was brought to an ENT for loss of hearing, the specialist said that there is the thing called mentally deaf, meaning your ears are okay, it's just that your mind may not be synchronized. Now, with that knack of understanding a movie that is in a foreign language, that is the opposite of mentally deaf. I sometimes watch Korean movies with subtitles and I sure would not understand if I wouldn't read the subtitles. I don't have that talent for that.
I watch all kinds of foreign movies, and I love most of them. Japanese, Korean, Thai, Filipino, and Spanish are the ones I really look for. I read the subtitles. I would be completely lost if i tried to watch it like you do.
Your Swedish parents spoke English to you when you were little? Cool! Doesn't Swedish accent sound like German? Did your parents enjoy watching German programs and movies when you were little?
You're right about it being a talent. I don't know what you would call it, either. But it would probably be something along the lines of keen ability of observation? But more than that. Keen ability of observation and recognition of human behavior? This is a lot of fun
German is, at times, really similar to English, so I find myself often understanding German words just because they are similar to their English counterparts. This also happens with Romanian and Italian. In fact, you would be surprised to hear how similar Italian is to Romanian - most of the times they are the Romanian words with an "o" or an "i" at the end.
There are similarities between the two languages, yes. When I was growing up, we had no such thing as a DVD player or any way to watch movies except on television or at the theater, and our church frowned on theaters so, no, everything I saw growing up was in English. At that, I didn't watch much television because I was probably ten or twelve before we got a television and, even then, there was only one station that would come in dependably.
I remember having only 4 stations, lol. ABC, NBC, & CBS were channels 3,6,and 9. 32 was PBS. 36 was the one we watched the most, and 46 played Dr. Who. I can't believe I still remember that.