Already worth the link

Great site. Sounds a lot like my wife's thoughts when she was doing her Chinese training. You really need to keep up on it, too. It seems that the language skills deteriorate pretty quickly if they fall out use.

They really do fade very quickly. I'm not sure at all how much I could actually speak now.

The article makes me wonder if, should I start practicing again, I should even bother with the written part of the language. I have plenty of Chinese friends who can't read or write at all. It might save me a lot of time.

My wife has to do the written stuff since it's her job - and not the simplifed characters either. It's the old fashioned traditional stuff. She thinks it's a beautiful language, and it sounds great to me, but the investment in the reading and writing has had her often wondering if it wouldn't save time just to find a starving student to do the translating.