I had to learn a little Russian for work a few years ago, although lost almost all of it now. Grammar is pretty horrific
Speaking of languages...
I had a Mandarin teacher here on the Isle of Man for a while. A very difficult language. It's tonal, with the meaning of a word changing based on how you pitch your voice. You can have a flat tone, a downward tone, an upward tone or a U-shaped tone where you pitch down and then back up. There are also rules about changing the tone based on adjacent words, so you can't have three U-shaped tones in a row for example - the middle becomes flat. A classic example is the word ma, which can mean mother, horse, scold or hemp depending on the inflection. Mandarin has no pitch-up for a question, as is done in many European languages, so you have to ignore your natural inflection instinct in questions or it changes the meaning of the word. I only lightly dabbled in Mandarin, but still a fascinating language. I wouldn't mind going back to it at some point.
In the last couple of years, I have picked up a little Hebrew, because it is spoken quite a lot in the office, although that hasn't been a problem recently
. That is relatively straightforward to learn - probably on a par with Italian or Spanish - apart from some of the pronunciation.
