Yes. I guess a lot of people can´t get past the first impression when confronted with those, and their shock only gets bigger when they see the kanji, they don´t give it enough time to settle in their memory and think it´s too difficult and that they won´t be able to learn it.........and when you think you can´t, then, you can´t. Like Xiao Long Li, Miyagi and Yoda :P would say "Do or do not, there is no try".

Try watching movies with Chinese subtitles, the subtitles are up and down so quick that I can't even count how many characters were up, and most Chinese are actually able to have time to read the sentence.

Chinese is a PITA to learn to read and write, but it sure is fast to read in most cases.

I tried to learn Mandarin once in the past for about several months, and I failed MISERABLY. Guess my brain is not good enough to learn that language.

That made me laugh :P
I was referring to japanese though. But yes, I wonder how fast can someone read characters like that. I mean with words, the brain tends to look for the first and last letter and just glimpse the letters in the middle, even if you write them in whatever order you want, the brain still reads the word prefectly, that´s why sometimes people read words with errors without noticing ( biologic error correction ram :P ). But I wonder in chinese, maybe something similar happens with characters, though, try reading a chinese forum with an average 12px letter size O_o, that´s why most chinese forums have big characters :P

In Serbia things work in similar manner. My other chosen language in school was German, but its pretty rusty now due to low usage. I also learned little Spanish while telenovelas from Latin America were very popular in my country (:D), I'm planning to improve that one in near future. And of course I have Slovak as my native language, as I hail from a region in Serbia where Slovaks have come 300 years ago (back then it wasn't part of Serbia), and we still prevail.

So, you could say languages are kind of my thing. ;)

I am sure it has been stated already, but in order to learn a language, you first have to have some real reason to learn it (like watching undubbed movies), and be able to constantly use it (even by just watching those movies).

I am fluent with:

- Finnish. My native language.

- English. Games, movies, reading of English magazines and books, using it every day at work, and internet of course. While I am far from perfect with it (especially with the vocabulary), I feel comfortable using it.

I personally feel everyone should learn and know English, it is the international language. I am irritated by certain bigger EU countries which seem to be rather resistant to English. It is the de-facto Esperanto, deal with it.

At the same time, I am so happy that English isn't my native language, nor the only language I know. When I am abroad, it is nice to know a rare language (like Finnish) that hardly anyone unfamiliar to you doesn't know. So you can freely speak with your friends etc., and not be like that old American tourist in Finland who was travelling with a bus, looked out of the window, and said to his wife "Cheap cars.". As if we didn't understand what he was saying. :)

Semi-"fluent" with:

- Swedish. I read it several years at school and did pretty well there, and I can understand maybe 70% of spoken Swedish (unless it is some unfamiliar dialect, like some Norwegian), and even say something back. I occasionally hear Swedish on TV, but beyond that, I don't really have urge to use it or learn more of it.

I have also passed the compulsory Swedish language test here, which is needed before you can apply for civil servant jobs and such where you are supposed to know Swedish passably. I've never needed myself, I spoke English with our Swedish customers.

Crappy with:

- German. I read it several years at school, but never used since. Some relatives in Germany, but I speak English with them.

- French. At university I decided I want to learn a new language, so I picked French and studied it for a couple of years. Never used it since, so maybe I know little bit of basics now, and maybe remember a few words. Merde!

- Thai. I've been in Thailand so many times that some of it has stuck to me, and I've even taken one Thai language course. But I get to use it far too little, and no idea whatsoever about the Thai writing.

I'm bilingual German/English. Can also speak French quite well, although it's a little rusty.

Can also get by with some broken Spanish, Dutch, Polish, Swedish and Russian, although I've never needed the Dutch as everyone in Holland and Belgium does their level best to impress me with their German.

There isn't any meaningful difference in that regards. The characters that everybody complains about are the same for Japanese as they are for Chinese because the Chinese borrowed them from Chinese.

French and English here.

French is my native tongue. English, I learned through exposure with English media and through my adoptive father (who doesn't speak French very well) in my teenage years.

I'm probably better at written English than most native anglophones, but I still have a French accent when I speak. I was never all that good with the oral tradition.

A new language is not something that you should learn for fun unless you're a linguist (then, it's your job). If you learn it for fun, you won't practice it and you'll lose it anyways. Might as well use the time to pickup something more worthwhile.

A new language is something that you learn out of necessity when a large part of your environment operates in another language. If you live in such an environment, you shouldn't be stubborn and refuse to learn. Just learn the darn language to live more harmoniously in your everyday environment.

@Those who want to learn French:

Seriously? If you live in an environment where French is significant (France, some French speaking parts of Canada and other former French colonies), sure.

Otherwise, try to learn Mandarin (I'm assuming you know English already) if you absolutely need to pickup another language (but then, you'd better make some Mandarin speaking friends in a hurry or you'll lose it).

Francophones were never numerous, nor particularly good at exporting their culture (some movies, some books, that's about it). They are significant in certain regions of the world, but not internationally.

I had to learn Spanish in high school and I knew that was an exercise in futility, because I'd never practice it.

I don't hate South Americans or Spaniards because of it.

Learn to let it go ;).

Well, they are pretty similar, besides the fact that sometimes they can mean totally different things like "letter" and "toilet paper".

The problem in da USA is ar edumacation sistem suks.
Unless you go to a private school, a foreign language is not taught until 7th grade at the earliest, and it's usually only required to have two years of one language before graduation. Not sure if our academic system has gotten better from my days, but the Europeans I have talked to started speaking English in grade school and it was a lot more than two years.
I've always wanted to learn three foreign languages: Spanish as it's widely used, German because of my ancestry, and Chinese because I want to know what the Chinese restaurant's employees say after I order.

I couldn't say better myself, especially in french speaking countries where people seems to be quite bitter their language isn't the language everybody learns like 200 years ago. Its also a shame a lot of native english speaker do not seem to wish to learn other languages.

Fluent with :
- French this is my native language.
- English : I learned it while I was young and still practice it on daily basis.

Somewhat understanding :
- German, I understand it, but barely speak.

Understanding a little :
- Italian, can understand a few words here and there and insults :p
- Spanish, I know the basics.
- Polish, I can understand it a little.

Fun fact: My great-grandfather knew how to speak Italian, German and English pretty well, because in the span of a few years he lived in all three occupational zones. Without moving.

I know English as my second language and some serbo-croatian when I feel like swearing. Also Italian. And German. Same reasons.

Most educational systems suck, the US actually fares pretty well when you account for the skewed sample samples that are used. The biggest problem is that we're trying to make all of our students better than 10% of the Chinese students and failing to measure the things that we do well against other students.

We've still got issues, but you find dumbasses all over the world.
Mandarin is a useful language, but even in China it's not as useful as it could be. Especially if you aren't literate. I wouldn't bother learning it unless you're really into Chinese culture, planning on spending some time there or you've already learned one or two of the other 10 most spoken languages.

That's likely to change in the future, but it's mostly hopeless to learn without literacy and that takes such a huge amount of time compared with learning something more accessible like German or even Esperanto.

That being said, it's hardly the horridly difficult language that it's made out to be, it's just a language that requires more effort than usual before you can make much use of it.