Am Romanian who also caught the last years of the Ceausescu regime, can confirm that I also learned English mostly by watching undubbed Cartoon Network shows in the early ‘90s, my favorite was Top Cat (at least that’s how I think it was called). I also learned Italian by watching Berlusconi’s channels (“Non e la Rai” and “Mai dire goal” were among my favorite TV shows), and my gf learned a pretty good Spanish by watching telenovelas while she was a teenager. Living in a “small” culture kind of forces you to have to learn new languages, otherwise you risk remaining stuck (both economically and “culturally”, so to speak).

I’m still a little upset with myself that I wasn’t motivated enough to also learn Russian when I was a kid (I had already learned how to read its alphabet) and maybe also German. Now that I’m approaching my 40s this is definitely on my to do list, I want to have the chance to read the works of people like Heine or Pushkin in their original language.