Quote Originally Posted by shogun
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.
Sorry Erich, reading my previous post again, I realise that it sounds like I am being less than respectful of your linguistic abilities. This is not the case at all and I must say I am always in awe at your grasp of the English language.

I was only trying to point out that to people who are multilingual it often is not considered as big a deal as it is in countries where English is the major or only language. This is especially so in the States and Australia, in my experience.