This was a really interesting article! I've dabbled in 3 languages (French, German, and Japanese) but have never gotten very proficient in any of them. I wonder if this article is written in any particular order, actually, because I was really surprised to see Japanese before Mandarin. Japanese is very easy pronunciation-wise, and though they do use Kanji and that is difficult to memorize, they are sort of "phasing it out" or it's more "modern" not to, so it's not too important to be able to communicate.

I seem to have a wall I hit with all languages. I pick up the basics and pronunciation pretty easily, but as soon as it gets to a tricky point in grammar, or memorizing new words becomes too difficult, I tend to fall behind. I hit that wall at about the same point in all of the languages I've attempted to learn (French and German in high school, Japanese in college) so I guess it's just something I'm not naturally very good at.

~Fades to Black~