<p>I'm currently a freshman in public school- for about 20 more days. I am a native speaker, and I am currently taking Spanish I. I chose to take it because I want to expand my grammatical knowledge of the language, and I am afraid of forgetting much of the language. Next year, I will be attending Andover. I am currectly deciding between Japanese and Spanish. Since I won't be spending time with my family as much, that means that I won't be able to exercise my Spanish with them. I want to be an architect, and I feel that Japanese is a plus in that field, as well as in business. I leaning more towards finishing off with Spanish at Andover and taking Japanese in college. What do you think I should do?</p>
<p>It is better to be really good at one language than to be okay at two languages. However, if you are very fluent in Spanish, it may be a good idea to try something new.</p>
<p>I take Japanese, and it's fairly difficult, but if you really commit than you can do well. I've been taking it for three years, so grammatically and vocabulary wise I'm well off, but it's not like the romance languages because it DOES take a long time to learn the alphabet...and don't even get me started about kanji. </p>
<p>Personally if I was to go back to sixth grade and choose my language again, I would have chosen Spanish, but because you are a native speaker of Spanish, perhaps it's time to try something new.</p>
<p>Japanese if you want a serious challenge, Spanish if you want to sit back and relax. Japanese will be a good experience, and it will certainly make your college transcript more impressive in the end - so you may want to consider putting yourself up for the challenge. I take Japanese at Exeter and while I admit I've envied the Spanish Studying slackers (at least comparatively speaking,) I don't regret having studied Japanese and I plan to continue in college. Keep in mind that it's not a language you can become fluent in over just a few years; if you want to learn Japanese at a high level it would mean studying beyond high school. Either way it's a good experience though, I think. Good luck!</p>