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Kongfucius on 07 April 2014
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Tom3k said:
Kongfucius said:

Good for you. I've been trying to learn German for over 3 years know and I'll be honest I'm not very good, even with the extra time to spot mistakes when typing there's no way I could be as fluent as that. Still, once my college work is over I should have more time to concentrate - I haven't really thought about it for months, I suspect I'll be extremely rusty when the time comes :(

:P

German can be a bit "hard" on English natives... But look at it from a bright side... You could have picked language with more cases, like Croatian or Finish ;) 
btw out of my own curiousity, are foreign languages in UK mandatory in elemnatry school or electives? (I'm asking because here, English is mandatory from 1st grade, and from 4th grade students get a 2nd language - usually German or Italian).

I don't think it's actually mandatory, I had to actively choose to study German at high school and in college and I think my primary school decided to do some French lessons not because they were told to but because they though it would be a good idea. That was nearly 10 years ago though, and I think the requirements may have changed

I know they are trying to encourage more people to learn a language, usually French or German - on top of getting 5 GCSEs from high school at grade A*-C (including maths and English), which is the commonly accepted good level, I think the government tried to introduce a second level where you had the same requirements only you had to study a language and a humanity as one of those five as well, though I don't know if it's actually been commonly accepted