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Oh man my language list is probably somewhere between 30-50, without just jumping on the "all languages" ever dream. THAT is what I'd do with immortality. However from a practical standpoint, starting off as a single language adult, 6-7 is probably still ambitious if reasonable. Being from CA I'd understand the convenience of Spanish as well. I can understand fair bits of it, particularly when reading (because of French/proximity). I could read the notes students in without asking to have them translated (generally all along similar veins of vocabulary) and clear the attendance messages on the voicemail in Spanish. Particularly when the parent remembered to give the students ID number, because totally have those single digits down. ^_~ However I can't speak it back. When Spanish speaking parents came in I could generally understand the things they were saying, but if they needed things that needed me to reply I was stuck, unless they could take me responding in English. Which to be fair, most could. Very few of the parents couldn't speak English, most just wouldn't.

My favorite character was Scar, followed by Timone, followed by Nala. So while none of that particularly is bothered by LK2 (honestly I can't even remember at the moment if Timone is in that one), I think its just my general feelings of annoyance with second generation. What can I say, breeders, ugh! razz It was way better than most cases of second gen though, like Little Mermaid 2. I don't really remember that, but I remember it was awful. And Ariel basically turned into her father, which was stupid. She grew up in the sea, why would she force her daughter to fear it. I mean see, this has me back on wondering about that child abuse thing. Was she afraid the awful things that happened to her as a child would happen to her daughter in the sea. What were these awful scary things?

I'm not talking about the language skills of the English here, I don't know any second language well enough to test them, particularly in their Asian languages. Though the ones who know French are pretty darn good, and a lot know German (but again I can't really gauge how good or bad their pronunciation is). I'm just saying that second languages are a more prevalent part of English culture than American culture. They don't require second languages, but those who embrace second languages have to do it to a level much further than the American minimum. And again, I don't particularly know of any of them doing Asian languages, I'm not even sure how well offered that'd be at most schools. It's generally things like French, Italian, Russian, German, Spanish, i.e. European languages (Spanish = Spain Spanish, not Mexican Spanish fyi). I know one person who knows Polish. So yea I don't think Japanese would be the best example language. I mean most schools in the US don't offer it either, everyone I know whose studied it in high school had to branch out and do it on their own at private courses/colleges. Even in my major university with its 35,000 undergrads there were about as many Japanese courses on offer as Ancient Greek, which is a very specialized thing. So I think in the US and UK both accessing Japanese, and most Asian languages (Tagalog was an option at my HS because we had an exceptionally high Filipino population), plays a large part in Westerners knowing these languages.

I've probably ranked about 30 languages but I think it's highly unlikely that even if I had all the time on the world I could do it. It'd be nice though. And yea it happens a lot in CA. I get wanting to use your own language or everything, but in schools specifically you are doing your children no favors pretending to distance yourself from most things. I mean I hadn't encountered this until I worked for a school district. I think the mentality is if they "can't" speak English they can't be bothered with certain things. I'm sorry, but it's not a coincidence that its the children of parents who remove themselves from interacting with the school that tend to slip through the cracks.

Yea I only saw it once, I remember almost nothing about it. Only that Ariel worked very hard to keep Melody away from the sea. Which I thought was dumb. I mean at least Triton had the fear of an unknown as an excuse (and what he did know wasn't good, like that people eat and kill things in the sea), Ariel completely didn't have that.

I think its just more in terms of what you have use for. European relations in terms of politics and business probably tend to benefit from a knowledge of multiple European languages. Asian relations, which probably aren't as heavy as European relations, also probably tend to be able to utilize English. And there is a longer history of working contact between England and nations such as France, Italy, Spain, Germany, etc than with Asian countries. Japan and China in particular are much bigger powers in the world today, and I think eventually political and business exposure markets are going to change. Its just for now education systems still haven't really transitioned into including Asian languages as much in curriculum, so its a slower process getting people to prioritize learning these languages. Generally people learn second languages with career options in mind.

Ya know I place Mandarin ahead of Cantonese as well on my "priority" list, I think that's because most of my good Chinese (Taiwanese in some cases) friends, particularly one of my best friends, speaks Mandarin. I don't think I have any other justification for the preference. I also probably have an interest in Welsh currently higher up than it was. That probably has a lot to do with the fact I'm seeing a Welsh guy atm. He taught me how to say good morning, and a couple of other things that are already forgotten (good morning kind of is butchered as well I expect). It's such an odd language.

I don't remember any of the music, but I don't recall any of it being worthwhile. Music is a big part of Disney movies for me, and that's usually something that really lacks in the sequels. It's one of the things I do like about Lion King 2, several good songs.

I don't think schools are very "caught up" in America either. I mean there are a few high schools that have a good covering of an Asian language or two (mine had Tagalog which I have a feeling is a rarity across the board, however we had neither Chinese nor Japanese nor anything else from that end of the world), and probably a very very minor few that offer several languages. In general though languages of any sort just aren't well covered at the HS level in the States I think, especially with the financial situation as it is it gets relegated to an elective that can easily be cut. Language options (for now) are better at universities in the States, but they are fairly good in the UK as well. It's just few people who weren't interested in and studying languages at high school level aren't as likely to want to pick them up at uni level. I don't think language barriers are going to be too big of an issue, it just keeps translators viable. xd But honestly, people who go into international relations and politics generally have a better grasp of multiple languages (it becomes mandatory to their field) then people who don't have the same career motivators to get the language down. Throw in its the 21st century and technology can navigate a lot of our barriers for us, I think language blocks are going to be more of an annoyance than any major problem.

Welsh is hard! I don't even know how you mouth half of the sounds in the language. The town he comes from, the first two letters are Ll...and ya know what, it doesn't even sound like L L...it's this weird hissing sound. I swear he's yanking my chain and speaking parsletongue at me half the time. xd Can fairly well say good morning, good afternoon and good night though. Also, moron means carrot in Welsh. And a slang term for friend is butt (not sure if that's how it's spelled, but of course that's what I'm thinking when talking about my best butt ^_~).

My two favorites are One of Us and We Are One...in part, these are the two songs I have so they are the two I know the best.

My HS dropped German right before I got there. And they kept trying to weed out French (it still persists though). So it was Spanish, French, Tagalog and ASL. I'm hoping for a cultural revolution!

It is adorable.

And man I'd KILL to have had Latin offered at my high school. ASL = American Sign Language. Sorry, I know a fair amount of deaf people/people working in the deaf community, in addition to having had it offered at my high school (the fairly sizable deaf community in the bay area is probably a large part of that offering), I don't even think about the fact that ASL is an acronym, much less one that people wouldn't know.

I've never heard Age Sex Location abbreviated to ASL. In part I don't think in CA we've ever used "location" on any sort of form. We didn't have foreign language fairs or anything, there is nothing any of the languages did together. The clubs at my HS pretty much didn't do a whole lot. I went to the culinary academy with French club in second year and that was it. Clubs just weren't well budgeted so certain clubs would meet and hang out, but it was more hanging out than anything functional. There would be multicultural fairs, but those would be more linked to ethnic groups than to languages. So ASL didn't particularly differ from other languages in terms of what it had to offer beyond being a language. I think it went up to third year at my HS, but there defintiely wasn't a fourth year of ASL. I'd have to ask my brother if he took 2 years or 3. To be fair though, because you drop the oral/aural component of learning you'd get as much done in 2 years as you would in 4 years of another language. In Ancient Greek, in which an aural/oral component somewhat exists (kinda hard to be concrete on what is correct there as we really don't have tape recordings of how the Greeks really pronounced things, we just do the best we can with the known rules) but is not part of the examined course, I learned about as much in 1 year of Greek as I did in about 3 years of French. Probably more. I think it'd be easier to achieve fluency in 2 years of studying ASL than in 4 years of a spoken language. This is of course in terms of classroom study. Learning a spoken language in context is generally much faster and a better system of incorporation.

Oh got it, I've never used those sites and didn't think about that. I don't know, personally I'd just rather date people I'm friends with than strangers? So I wouldn't go to a site looking for romance, and those sites are exactly designed to build friendships. I dunno, if I'm not finding love offline I'm just content with not having love. And currently I do have someone in my life (not love at this point, but we'll see) so I think I'm good. ^_^

Yea I think most were pretty useless. In part because the sports teams and performing arts groups all did fundraising as well, and they had better fundraisers. They had more capital to put up initially to have better fundraisers. So yea I don't think a club ever went anywhere except to the city really. So I did band and I did swim team, but I never really got into French club. Also I while sports and arts groups were all classes, in a school of 4000+ clubs were not well advertised. Particularly ones that didn't have an attachment to a subject (like Japanime, considering we didn't offer Japanese).

I wish I'd had Latin as an opportunity in HS, but I did love French and would want to have taken French as well. I hate the either/or that seems to be the language program in the States, particularly at the high school and lower level. People in Europe have more opportunities to take 2 or 3 or more foreign languages. After about 14 or 15 they no longer have such a rounded all subjects curriculum and you start dropping off into where you want to focus. Also weirdly enough on ASL as an acronym, that's the first thing everyone in Europe things of when I say ASL here (which as Sign is what I'm always talking about when I use it, convenient). However German is probably more useful than American Sign here. In the Bay Area probably not so much. xd