I still retain a lot of Spanish & a surprising amount of French from 2 years each in grades 9-11—understanding more so than speaking), but it’s almost impossible to keep up a working knowledge if you don’t have the chance to practice regularly.
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I learned drinking songs in French, so there’s that.
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True dat. I’m looking at my French and German literature texts on the bookshelves and thinking, I read THAT?
Since I wanted to avoid taking a language in college, I stretched myself by channeling all of my high school latin and Spanish and trying to “place out” on the language placement test. Well, I did do pretty well but shot myself in the foot by placing in the top level. Beyond my actual capability. So there I was, in a Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday 8am class taught by a German prof, over my head, occasionally with a hangover, with a prof whom half the time I couldn’t understand. I survived and actually learned a few things that had nothing to do with Spanish.
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I “placed out” in French and placed into honors German, which for some unknown reason I decided to take as an elective. For my trouble I was subjected to the absolutely worst professor I have ever experienced in my life, sent straight from the lowest regions of hell and sure of her mission. 
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I took about 4 months of German in high school just for interest. A friend of mine in the class was voted least likely to speak German since he was so bad at it. However, after university in England he got a job in Germany, with a stipulation from his employer that he had to be fluent in six months; he did it, married a German, and lives there now.
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Diagramming sentences was part of the curriculum til at least 7th grade.
This was the book:
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I went to an elementary school whose curriculum must have been designed by new age hippies, so when I moved to (a normal) junior high in 7th grade, I was way behind a lot of my peers in a lot of things - my peer group had had at least a year and maybe more of diagramming sentences. Eventually I caught on, and was hooked. The way that diagramming revealed the sheer logic of sentence structure was quite alluring to me. IIRC, we did a little diagramming in 8th grade, too, but by 9th grade we were done. Still, I would diagram sentences on my own. I was a strange kid.
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We used that book (grade 7-12, graduated in 1989). My teachers always skipped the diagramming chapters though!
I learned all my parts of speech from taking Latin. 
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A little Love is Blind Germany could reactivate your calcified language skills. You might even dream in German again (as I did). 
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My parents were Germans who emigrated to NYC as adults. My father repaired Volkswagens (rarely seen here when I was a preschooler. He and the few other VW owners pronounced the shortcut “fau vay”. In German, “v” is a plosive “f” sound and “w” is the English “v” sound.
As for more linguistic play, NPR’s Car Talk archives plus googling will take you to “Vowels for Bosnia” and a 50-ish year old New Yorker essay, “How I Met My Wife”, both engendering Depends-worthy laughter.
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I loved listening to Car Talk 
I long ago resolved not to try to learn any heavily inflected languages, like German or Russian. Keeping up my Greek (another heavily inflected language) is hard enough–too hard, in fact.
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It was my favorite. 
Yeah, as far as NPR shows go, for sure. We mostly listen to podcasts on road trips these days.
When I was doing significant drive to work times that were long but not nerve wracking or attention demanding, I liked listening to old time radio classics - dramas and detective stories, but not comedies (which are terribly dated and unfunny) on satellite radio.
It’s funny listening to Johnny Dollar recite his itemized expense account.
My car doesn’t have apple/android built in … it’s too old 
. GPS, yes, but I haven’t updated the maps for 7 years. I can use Waze if I have to.
I wish I had heard my grandfather and his sibs speak the German of their youth. They were born in the late 1870’s and early 1800’s in pre-state Washington. I met them all as a very small child. I think they let their language go.
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My old/new friend sent me this in a txt after we met for lunch a couple days ago. Lives get busy. Best not to get too butt-hurt about it, especially if you truly care about someone.
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Funnily, I think I would tolerate that more. It’s the shows about pedantic geniuses that have those geniuses make such embarrassing errors… at least for me.
I have a friend who teaches at the University level who makes a horrible “so and so and I’s” formulation. It makes me skin crawl but I’ve never said anything. (I am still trying to fight “based off” but I know I’m losing.)
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As in “so and so and I’d gone out for a drink?” Bc I don’t see anything wrong with that.
