Well I can speak Greek well, with a slight foreign accent but fluently. I learnt a lot of abstract words from the students I was preparing for the Cambridge exams. I fell in love and got married to a Greek man while speaking English and despite my heredity( my dad's Greek) I was raised in a different country, culture, language. So when I came to live in Greece, everything was literally Greek to me. I learnt fast however. I found similarities in vocabulary and syntax between Greek and other languages I could speak. I learnt to read by reading syllable by syllable some cheap western books translated into Greek. After I finished the first one I could read, after I finished the fifth one I could speak intelligiblly. This is what extensive reading does to a language student
