My hair is Asian-colored, but that's a bit beside the point of talking about languages.
I've collected a few language qualifications. I passed the JLPT N4, but I estimate that my current level is about JLPT N3. I'm aiming the the JLPT N2 next year's December. As for Latin... if any one of you are familiar with the National Latin Exam, I got one of those Dictionary awards. 8D
Also should I take Chinese as a course or learn Italian? Because while I speak Mandarin very fluently, I'm practically illiterate, yet Italian seems pretty hard. '~'
Do you have faith in memorizing boatloads of Chinese characters? If you don't, go for Italian. Italian shouldn't be that bad; it's a fairly straightforward language, but this is coming from the viewpoint of a Latin student here.
Also, English is as difficult as... ugh. I hate it. Most people here have been saying English is easy. For a second language, it really isn't. For instance, you can't say "there is many people"- it's "there are many people", and I get that wrong constantly. Swim goes to swum; faint and feint are pronounced the same; fly goes to flew; slay goes to slew; eat goes to ate. WHERE IS THE LOGIC IN THIS?
NONE.
And we have so many uneccesary vocabulary words. What is a synod? Declamatory, abstruse, bombastic, verisimilitude, inflammable (which means the same as flammable), and several others.
Chinese was a language probably invented by an old, old man who had too much
baijiu. But, funnily enough, it's so simple that... it's great. No conjugation. You tell the time when things happened by context or stating the time. "I don't understand" literally goes to "I hear not understand" or "I see not understand", and it is a four-syllable, efficient, quick sentence. 我真的很愛中文。我因該要把它學好一點,但是沒有時間。很可惜。
Japanese sounds beautiful. It really does. However, it uses two phonetic "alphabets", if you will- syllabaries, to be exist. And then it tries to use Chinese characters. The result is a linguistic mess. One kanji, or chinese character, can have as many as 10 different pronunciations depending on context. 日本語は本当にすごく非合理的な言語です。私は日本語の発音が大好きで、文法もよく分かる気がして、でも漢字の様々のばかげたな読み方が本当に嫌いです。
I wish to learn Korean as well. Will find time sometime. But, I am near-fluent in Chinese, Japanese, and English.