IME, college admissions officers think Latin is a hard language and if anything you get a little boost for it. In any event taking any language through to the AP level will be considered favorably, though it is not required anywhere.
[QUOTE=""]
Another issue is that Japanese has a very limited number of sound combinations...
[/QUOTE]
That seems to be the case. My experience is that Japaneses write OK/well but are horrendous at pronunciation.
(Example: truck is pronounced as To Ruk Ku and TV as Tele Bi)
[QUOTE=""]
Japanese grammar is (IMO) relatively easy
[/QUOTE]
Try Chinese - even simpler. :o)
Example: I’s 3 kid eat yesterday.
English seems like a walk in the park compared to, say, Attic Greek (and I heard that Sanskrit is even worse).
Read in the Economist years ago that English is the first language in the history of the world where non-native speakers out number native speakers - pretty interesting.
In the Middle East, there probably aren’t any bars where u need to use Arabic to order a beer…
Oh in downtown Jordan there are plenty of places you can get alcohol. All of the hotels catering to westerners for sure. Even the very conservative Irbid had one liquor store.