Thought Blogs is currently running a piece on learning a second language (strangely, the permanent link to that piece it at another blog). I'm glad I know Portuguese, even though a little fades from my memory every day, and the few times I get to speak with Brazilians let me know that my accent (which was never great) is getting worse by the minute. I'm also glad that I know enough Spanish to get myself two-thirds of the way through a sentence. But I have to agree with Jim Webber that it's not as easy for those of us who know English to pick a good second language to learn. Especially when everybody else is picking English as their second language.