I took french in high school. But it never really stuck with me. I can tell someone what my name is though and still know how to say most of the alphabet.In high school I took 3 years of spanish, didn't stick with me very much.
One thing I didn't really like about class in high school, is that we had to pick a Spanish name.
Whereas in my Japanese class, we were shown how to write our actual names in Japanese. Which I really appreciated. Did not have to pretend to be Timoteo or something... like I did in Spanish class.
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I usually had like a list of like 10 languages I would like to learn in my lifetime. Wasn't always the same list, but usually was like:
Japanese
German
French
Chinese
Russian
Spanish
Latin
Greek
Italian
Well there's 9 at least.
Arabic would probably be pretty useful.
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On my plane ride, there was a gentlemen next to me who was Chinese and he was reading a Chinese book. I thought it was pretty cool because I recognized a handful of symbols. (I could tell it wasn't Japanese, there weren't any Hiragana/Katakana.)
It is actually making me pretty interested in learning Chinese now. More than before. There are a lot of similarities with the writing.
I'd like to learn Japanese before going there one day.The Japanese major at my school uses the Genki books. There are 2 books + a supplement for each, and that basically covers the introductory Japanese (actually the first 5 classes). And then Tobira is the book they use next. Tobira has 2 supplementary books. But those books cover the language learning at the University here.
Don't know if that interests you at all, but I thought I'd mention it.
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On like a fourth note, I think my fiance will be learning Japanese with me. Also at least one of my friends will be as well.
Pretty cool.