You don't know your own language until you've started learning at least one other...

I was born in South Africa to Afrikaner parents. I started learning English because I was born in December and emotionally insufficiently mature to go directly to the Afrikaans school.

My proper British education took place in The Netherlands, where we lived for five years and learned about cultural diversity. I then returned to a traditional Afrikaner school, but attended the English track - being progressive, it had become a double-medium school.

After moving to Switzerland, I developed my understanding of Germanic roots by learning High German as spoken and written in Switzerland. Now I'm working on Swiss German and African Roots (learning a little bit of Zulu culture), making use of a far-eastern pivot by learning a little bit of Japanese.