Wow, cebrian, you think Spanish is hard?
When I went back to Ecuador, I knew how to count from 1-15 in Spanish, and the word "tonto". In three months they moved me from beginner Spanish to Advanced - not because I'm a linguistic genius, but because I found Spanish extremely easy to pick up given its very rigid grammatical and spelling structure. Especially spelling! I personally found Spanish much easier to learn than English. Chinese (specifically the Beijing dialect) is the easiest in terms of grammar: no conjugations, no singular/plural, no tense, no gender. Korean is probably the easiest language to learn how to read. You can literally start reading Korean after one hour of guidance. You may not have a clue what you are reading, but you can!
Good luck with your Japanese, though - and its 37 different levels of "Usted"!
