John Ronner (center) and members of the Murfreesboro Spanish Club

“Keeping a foreign language in shape is a matter of regular practice,” says John Ronner. And Ronner would know: the 64-year-old is currently trying to keep up his German, French, Spanish, Russian and Dutch.

That’s why he’s founded the Murfreesboro Spanish Club, French Club and German Club. Organized through the website Meetup.com, each group meets biweekly: the Spanish Club on Mondays at Carmen’s Taqueria, the French Club on Tuesdays at the coffee shop at Hastings, the German club on Wednesdays for dinner at various restaurants around town.

“It’s a good schedule for busy people,” says Ronner, who regularly attends all three. “You don’t need to practice every day—though once every week would be good.”

The goal of each group is simply to meet with others interested in the club’s language for practice in both speaking and comprehension of the language. “It’s a lot of fun to be able to speak in a foreign language,” says Ronner. “I would love to be able to sit down at a table with a native speaker and have a conversation.”

The matter of fluency, he says, can be a moving target. For himself, Ronner defines fluency as being comfortable in a language—“but not necessarily speaking like Cervantes,” he laughs. He believes he is fluent in German, which he studied in college and later spoke during a year living in Germany. His first exposure to foreign language, he says, was when he used to visit his grandparents as a teenager. Though the three of them would talk in English, when his grandparents were in another room, they would speak German to each other.

“It sounded like a jumble of sounds to me,” says Ronner. “I was mesmerized that they could actually understand each other. I decided then and there that I would learn German.”

His love for German soon expanded to other languages as well, and Ronner’s ultimate goal is to become a polyglot—that is, as he defines it, someone who is fluent in six languages or more. In addition to organizing and attending the three language groups here in Murfreesboro, Ronner also uses the website italki.com, which matches users with a language partner who speaks the language they want to learn and who is interested in the language they speak.

“I definitely recommend it to people who are smitten with foreign languages,” he says. “It’s worked wonders for me.”

In the meantime, the Murfreesboro Spanish, French and German clubs are open to new members, who are welcome to attend regularly or just one time, and all of their calendars and information are available at Meetup.com. There’s no better time to start practicing a new language than now.