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haha "romance languages", i'm guessing they would include french, spanish, italian.. any others?
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Yeah, tons of them. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages
And once you learn even a little of one, you'll be able to understand (especially in written form) the other ones as well. Not as well as you can understand the one(s) you've learned, but you'll still understand quite a bit. The Romance languages are the easiest languages for English speakers to learn. The Germanic languages (like German, Dutch, Swedish, and many others) are the second easiest to learn, but still are
much harder than Romance languages. And when it comes to Romance languages, Spanish is usually rated as the easiest Romance language to learn for English speakers. In pronunciation for instance and writing for instance, it is easier than Portuguese or French. There are also about 20 countries that speak Spanish, so that means you have a lot of people to practice with, a lot of different cultures to interact with, and there are a ton of books and websites written in Spanish. If you are not afraid to try to read things that sound like they would be hard, after you start studying Spanish for a few months, you should look at lists of cognates (words that are similar to English words)--there are many lists available on the internet, you will find that you can read books that use a lot of technical vocabulary (such as books about science, technology, computing, religion, etc.) quite easily--almost as easily as reading English. I've studied Spanish for less than a year, putting an average amount of effort into it, and I can read these things very easily. If you are interested in knowing why this is so, look up the history of the English language, especially the part about the Norman conquest of England in the year 1066. This does not happen with learning any other language family--like the Germanic languages, the Slavic languages, etc. They get harder when it comes to reading technical material. So you have a treat in Spanish, because you will be able to read interesting stuff very soon, whereas your peers learning, say German, or Russian, will still be reading children's books.
