Which of the following languages would you rather learn?

[politicallefty]

Of the choices, I'd most like to be fluent in Spanish. I've taken several classes throughout high school and college, which gives me a strong foundation (though not even close to fluency). Mostly, I really just need to work on my vocabulary.

To the OP: I think you should have given more choices for the poll.

Of all languages, I'd really like to learn and be fluent in Japanese. According to the State Department, it's considered the most difficult of the hard languages (which also includes Arabic, Chinese, and Korean). From what I've seen of what it takes to learn, it doesn't particularly hard. It seems more like it just takes a long time to really know what you need. Japanese, to me, looks fairly straight-forward. The hardest part seems to be learning the kanji, where fluency apparently requires knowing about 2000 characters.

[politicallefty]

Everyone in LA is taught French in elementary school, but I haven't picked it up since. I'd like to, however.

I wish; I went to a Catholic school in New Orleans for elementary and they just had Spanish. I probably would have liked French more.

Most elementary schools don't teach foreign languages at all, which is huge shame. Even beyond the benefits of actually knowing another language, it has been shown to improve cognitive development. Foreign language education should be mandatory starting in elementary school. It makes no sense to wait until high school (as most schools do) before offering foreign languages.

[politicallefty]

And this is odd, too. Isn't foreign language instruction begun at least in middle school (6th-9th grade)?

Well, I consider 9th-12th grade to be high school. But no, I don't think the vast majority of Americans have real access to foreign language classes prior to 9th grade. The best time to start learning other languages is during elementary school. Everything I've ever read strongly supports teaching other languages as early as possible.