re: Anyone here ever learned German? New Year’s resolution was to start learning a language.

I had fans over there when Dirk was playing for the Mavs. Would have been nice to have know it then. Michael Finley actually asked if I asked a question in German when he and Dirk were at the podium after a playoff win. I had gotten tongue tied when asking a question about the game.

Mandarin Chinese would have been nice too for all of the time covering Mavs vs. Rockets games. It would have come in handy for Wang Zhizhi's 1st game for the Mavs. When the Mavs put him in at the end of the game, the fans were chanting, "Cha lu pa!"

He scored the 125th point in the game to win the fans that were there a free Taco Bell Chalupa, and they cheered like it was the winning shot of an NBA Championship.

ETA: After they told us not to ask him questions about the U.S.spy plane that had been shot down by China, and said we could ask about the game, I asked his translator if he knew what they were chanting and why. Wish I could have asked that in Mandarin..

Learn Pig Latin. It's easier than German.

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Austria.

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Unless things have changed in the last 10 years, you will def need some basic German there. Granted I was in the more rural parts, but if you didn’t know the basics it was rough for non Klingon speakers

Pretty easy to learn. The pronunciation is much easier than English because you pronounce every letter. No silent E’s or differing pronunciations of “gh”.
The hardest part is der-die-das. Not intuitive.

Took it in college as an elective just for hell of it. Professor was a native German. Since I have had zero exposure to it, I cannot speak it all that well, but can still read basic stuff.

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Yep. Not useful at all unless you actually go to Germany or Austria.

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Damn, I was going to learn German to retire in Liechtenstein

Yes been using Duolingo for about six months now. It won’t get you fluent but I am learning a lot of words for a trip this summer.

The three genders of the (die, der, das) are annoying, but the infinite and overlapping possessive and other pronouns are what's so difficult.

I started, but i need to do Spanish. Much more useful for my purposes.

Not sure if anyone mentioned this, but with the growing Spanish population learning some Spanish maybe more useful than learning German.

In hindsight even in the late 1990’s, I wish I would have taken Spanish instead of French.

I speak German well enough to pass for German whenever I've traveled in Europe. One summer I took an entire year of German at the University of Maryland. Then more in college then a summer in Germany living with a German Family, even a German boyfriend. I still can switch to German whenever I want to.

In Houston, an IT fellow worked part time for us and spent a lot of his life in Houston Traffic. He decided to learn Icelandic and did with tapes etc. as he sat in traffic. He was pleased with his progress that way.