Yumi2004

Dude, you know Czech? I hear that it's one of the hardest languages to learn. I'd like to learn at least a little of it, cause it's half (3/8, actually) of my heritage.

I learned Czech in 1984 at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA. (OH, do I have to go to a schoo in Monterey? Darn. ) I'm not fluent in it any longer, but I still remember quite a bit and I still have my Czech and my Slovak dictionaries.

The Army also tried to teach me Arabic. Well, I graduated but I can't claim to have learned Arabic. At my best, I was most comfortable speaking to little kids. I can read a little Arabic, but I <b>never</b> was good at it. It's a beautiful language though. If I had been younger, I might have done better with it, but it's tough learning a language of any kind at 29.

Oh, and as far as difficult languages go, Arabic, Chinese-Mandarin, Japanese and Korean are considered CAT IV (the hardest). Czech and Slovak were CAT III as are most of the Slavic languages. But at least Czech used a Roman alphabet. Cyrillic would have been much tougher.

Oh, how true! How true! Those little schoolkids don't know how good they've got it!
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Geez, you poor guy! I too had such hardships -- radar intercept training in Panama City, FL. Tough duty....
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