Well said. A guy I used to know went to private school for 11 years of his life and just recently dropped out of college to install stereos and 'soup' up his car. Meanwhile, another guy I went to public school with (having never stepped foot in a private school) is about to graduate with his Registered Nurse license and bachelor's degree.

Here ya go.

Learn Russian.

Learn it well.

You'll never want to study another language ever again.

LOL, that's funny. A guy I used to know at my old community college said the same thing. It's that bad, eh? How long did you endure it for? LOL.

I was thinking more along the lines of Italian or Portugese...keep it a little more manageable for a spanish speaker, and all.

I think that every human can learn a relatively limitless number of languages, all things being equal. From what I understand, the best time to pick up languages is five and younger - if/when I have children, I plan to speak to them in Spanish and English. Personally, if I were interested in learning a fourth language, I'd probably look at German or Japanese.

__________________
"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

Hmm... maybe stay away from Italian. I spoke (speak) Spanish fluently, and then I took Italian for a while. The nice thing is that you can basically speak Spanish to Italian-speakers and they will understand you. The hard part about those two languages is that they're so similar that you start to confuse them (if you want an infinitive in Italian, say it in Spanish and add "e" to the end - "andar" becomes "andare", "aprender" becomes "aprendere", etc)

Portuguese is pretty similar too, from what I've heard spoken. Understanding fluent Spanish, I was able to follow a Portuguese conversation to a degree.

__________________
"Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have... The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases."

-Thomas Jefferson

I took it up on my own. About 5 years ago. Have made little progress because I haven't invested that much time into it lately. The 36 character alphabet is strange. It's a pretty cool language. Not easy to learn though.

I have a friend going to a school in North Texas right now who is minoring in Italian, and we will sometimes converse that way (come to think of it, a terrible experiment we tried was a full week immersion "you speak to me in Italian, I speak to you in Spanish" sort of thing...it fell right on it's face ). It taught me a little about the language, though. The verbs was one of the first things I noticed WRT simularity, as well as the first ten digits, days of the week, etc. It's interesting, but I can see how Italian has it's own challenges as far as masucline/feminine, etc. Plus I'd have to totally switch my accent marks - who the hell wants to do that?? Lol.

Well, it takes a lot of motivation to even start taking up a language outside of a classroom setting. Are there any Russian immigrant populations in the Western U.S.? (I'm fairly uneducated about that area of the country).
Only reason I ask is that not having a population ot practice with can increase the difficulty in learning sometimes.

We have a pretty big population of them in my city. That's part of the reason I started learning it. A lot of them worked at a company I used to work for.

I have plenty of people to practice learning it with. I just need to take the extra time for it.

You forget them if your not around them. Don’t waste your time unless it’s a job requirement (As was mine in field services for industrial machine installation.).

__________________
Only a liberal would know how hard it is to get a nicotine patch to stick to a monkey.

Japanese is very cool, yet remarkably difficult. I was taking it alongside my grad classes, and I found that it was taking more of my time and effort than any of my grad-level classes. I had to quit after 2 quarters because it was so much effort.

__________________
When they come a wull staun ma groon
Staun ma groon al nae be afraid
Thoughts awe hame tak awa ma fear
Sweat an bluid hide ma veil awe tears

You're approximately 110% correct. A parent needs to be invested in their child's education.


When I'm absolutely fluent in Spanish, I may try to pick up another. Maybe I'll go live with my aunt in Belgium and learn French.

__________________
"Jesus said: I have cast fire upon the world, and behold I guard it until it is ablaze."
Gospel of Thomas