Yeah, no, that's definitely not my background at all. I mean it was kind of just assumed I'd learn French, but also my parents both have some German and my dad some Russian, my grandmother's a translator, that kind of thing. And I mean--pretty much everyone I know who grew up here speaks at least some French, and my home was basically English but also used some French expressions too, that kind of thing.

But also I think...a lot of what I get from languages is 1) increased subtlety of meaning and 2) increased access to beauty (e.g. poetry). And the only language that I'm really fluent in--catching the subtleties of meaning, recognizing references, that kind of thing--is English. So it'd hurt a lot to give up, if that makes sense.)

I would definitely be willing to devote a week to Esperanto! If you do find the lessons, let me know. Anyway I think I can already understand some of it, just from, like, recognizing similarity to words I already know in other languages :)

I'm learning Mandarin, and, yeah, simplified Chinese. I think Cantonese has six tones, I'm perfectly happy over here :P Honestly though I'm really enjoying it, it's pretty fun. 我喜欢中文！(hopefully the grammar's correct there...) & I like the simplified characters, but to each their own I guess. At least if you ever do decide to learn, you'll have a head start, you'll know some of the characters from Japanese!