When talking about English and French my grandma, born 1921, said she can’t imagine speaking foreign languages having never had the chance to learn at least one. After seven years of elementary school (“Volksschule”) where she had been doing a good job, her parents didn’t have the money to buy school books. So she couldn’t attend high school but started to train as a taylor. She said she always got angry when she heard someone talking about “the good old times”. From her point of view there wasn’t anything like that.