I was raised up in Germany, in German education systems you have to learn at least one foreign language, which is usually English. Options are French and Latin later. If you know the old Roman Latin, it is very easy to learn Spanish and Portuguese. For example with my friends in Brazil I talk in "Portugnol", which is a mixture of Spanish and Portuguese.
Just give it a try. My wife is Japanese. She went to a German crash course in Heidelberg in Germany for 6 weeks. That helped a lot. The Goethe Institute is sponsored by the German government, so the courses are very cheap. They have branches in many countries all over the world.
http://www.goethe.de/
You can switch to English language here.
Anyway, a second language is a must nowadays. My son speaks Japanese, English, German, Spanish, French plus he understands some other languages. He studied in Japan, Hongkong, New York (John Jay College for Criminal Justice) and now lives in London U.K.