Yeah, I wonder if it’s possible to learn to read and write a language but not speak it? I couldn’t care less about speaking any languages cause let’s face it, I’m never going to have the money to travel. But I’d sure love to read books from other countries without having to wait for a translation.
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Until life screws you over on that regard and presents a situation where you might have to speak to someone in the language you’ve learned.
Keywords here to remember: until and might.
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You might end up finding yourself in a majority spanish-speaking neighborhood one day.
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Can confirm that I am amazing at reading my second language but absolute trash at speaking and listening to it.
Thus why subtitles will always be a blessing.
So,
Yes.
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It’s def possible haha I mentioned that I can understand Spanish since I grew up with it but I suck at speaking it because I was never forced to speak it by my parents. I can also read in Spanish well. I’m currently reading the Percy Jackson series in Spanish.
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I think it’s definitely possible to read and write in a language but never speak it, or not be able to actually speak it due to pronunciation issues. It’s all about practice and memorization. Heck, it’s the opposite for children—they can speak a language, but they end up having to learn how to read and write in it, and some people actually do grow up without learning how to read or write.
I mean, I’m never probably gonna have the money to do so either which is probably why learning a language is kind of hard since you’ll end up forgetting about it. One of my oldest sisters took French throughout high school and became fluent in it. But she never used it after high school and completely forgot how to speak it, though she can sometimes still read it.
However, you may find yourself in situations where it can come in handy. Even though the majority of the population in my town speak English or Spanish (or are bilingual with both), I’ve met quite a few people who speak Swahili (I think that’s the language they were speaking? 
), Arabic, and Hindi.
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This is so true. It’s different for lots of us bilinguals and trilinguals and everything after. I never learned how to write well in Spanish but I can read it like it’s nothing.
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Yes. That’s what a lot of Greek scholars do.
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I desperately want to learn Spanish! took it all throughout college but language instruction in the US is piss poor. Learned how to conjugate verbs great but never learned how to speak it. Would love to spend a summer in a Spanish-speaking country to do some intensive language study.
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