> “I wish I knew the Spanish language, if for no other reason than to know what people are saying behind my back.”
:-)
I haven’t used the language much in decades, and no longer claim to be fluent, but I have an M.A. in it, and besides studying in this country, also took courses at universities in Mexico and Spain. So even out of practice, I can still speak, write, and understand it. (After a few years teaching Spanish, I switched to electronics and computers, and then became a technical writer.)
With a background in English, and having studied some French, you could probably learn to read Spanish in a fairly short time (though English is a Germanic language, it borrowed many words from French and Latin — the source of Spanish — so in many instances words in those languages resemble each other). Learning to speak and understand spoken Spanish, though, is a much more difficult task.
You probably know that with respect to French already. I can read French with ease, but have difficulty understanding the spoken language (and can hardly speak it at all).
Good idea. The net automatic translators are far from perfect, but they usually suffice to understand the gist of what's being said. For instance, that one translates "se deroga" as "Repeals" when it's really being used reflexively, and more or less amounts to "It's repealed" -- literally "se" (itself), "deroga" (repeals), that is, it has been repealed.