I'm not a native English speaker, but I did go to an all-English speaking high school. I was a more-or-less conversationally competent in English at the time, b

I'm not a native English speaker, but I did go to an all-English speaking high school. I was a more-or-less conversationally competent in English at the time, but speaking it and learning from it full time in school was a real challenge. I remember clearly that one of the most difficult subjects was chemistry, because everything suddenly had new names and none of them made any sense. Why is it "sodium" instead of "natrium", or "potassium" instead of "kalium", when the elements are Na and K? For the first six months, I had to basically memorize a table of translations between my native language and english, and silently translate everything my teacher was saying to be able to follow along.