My mom was a middle school Spanish teacher, and her favorite trick was to promise her Spanish I classes that they’d be able to read (but not understand!) just a

My mom was a middle school Spanish teacher, and her favorite trick was to promise her Spanish I classes that they’d be able to read (but not understand!) just about anything within the first week or two. And indeed, they could - eighth grade Spanish I students had to have had an A in English the previous year, so they were all decent English readers. I’ve found that German is mostly phonetic like that, but not quite as consistent as Spanish is.