There's all sorts of words I can recognise in other languages, despite not speaking them. French, German, Italian, Spanish; all these have more than a handful o

There's all sorts of words I can recognise in other languages, despite not speaking them. French, German, Italian, Spanish; all these have more than a handful of words that most fairly literate native English speakers can recognise, even excluding the loan words. We learn them from exposure and association, just like with icons. Likewise, words are not totally useless if you don't speak the language. I don't speak any of the above languages, but I can still make basic comments like oui/non, ja/nein, etc.