I took French all throughout school - 13 years of French immersion programs and actual French school. I went to all-French school for a couple of years and it was really fun, except for the punishment for speaking English - after school detention for 2 hours. You couldn't speak English anywhere on school property, even your parents when they would be at the school.
I haven't really spoken French since I graduated high school, because there really isn't any use for it out in Ontario except for educational purposes, really. I'm going to try and get into the Advanced French class at my university in September to brush up on all aspects of French, especially the spoken part.
I also did 3 years of German and 1 year of Spanish in high school. I had an easier grasp of German which is why I continued with it. German and English are part of the same language group and have a similar history, so that's probably why. I understand it fairly well when reading it or hearing someone speak it, but I suck at speaking it because I haven't done so since I left high school. I'm hoping to pick it up again. Spanish just wasn't my thing, even with all the similarities to French. I know the basics, of course, but I don't see myself re-learning it anytime in the future.
One language I'd love to learn is Italian, and I have a good grasp of it already seeing as 90% of musical terms and directions are in Italian. I also hate to say that I come from a Jewish family and I don't know a single word of Hebrew. We're not religious at all and so there was never really a reason to learn it.
I heard that Mandarin Chinese is the hardest language to learn if English is your first language. I'm assuming it's because it's a tone-based language and a word can mean 5 different things depending on the tone used.
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