I'm sure we have a few or more on here...
What is/are your native language(s)?
English
What language(s) did you learn? Why?
French, was required in school. Technically I can read the greek alphabet fluently as well, but I don't actually understand the greek LANGUAGE, so anything written in greek i wouldn't understand... don't ask me why, i was bored and learned the alphabet in like an hour since I thought it was neat XD Not really a language, but it's language related =3
Also know bits of japenese(katakana and hiragana), and swedish, but not enough to do anything with past a few sentances.
How useful is a second/third/whatever language to you generally? On a daily basis?
I'll only count french since it's the only one I know well enough to speak any amount in. And honestly, it's more or less useless as a whole and on a daily basis. The french locations in canada are primarily in quebec, and in a very specific region of nova scotia, and parts of new brunswick which's pretty much pure bilingual there.
So either they know english as well as french, meaning no issue for me, or I've never been to an area I needed french, so once again, no big deal.
Overall I haven't found any real point to knowing the second one; english is the language of commerce of the world... everyone in every country who wants to do much of anything internationally pretty much needs to know english, so there's no real "NEED" to learn a second language for me. Honestly, I don't actually LIKE english though, the language irritates me, don't like the way it sounds, the mess of rules and exceptions that don't have any consistency, etc etc.
What aspects of the language did you find difficult? What did you find easy?
French's biggest problem was I was living in an area with VERY little french for awhile... if yeu wanted to learn french, yeu actually went to a french immersion school which had most of their classes in french. If yeu didn't do that, then yeu got pretty much zero french. When I was in grade 5, apparently we were using the grade 2 french textbooks... I didn't realize they were ranked by grade until I moved and was jumped from grade 2 stuff to grade 6 with nothing in between...
As such, my biggest problem with learning french, was actually skipping 4 years of classes, essentially. This left me really confused and made no sense for several years, then... suddenly in grade 10... it all just 'clicked' and I could think fluently in french and suddenly understood everything. But that was the last year I was FORCED to use french, and since in my entire LIFE I had never, not once, EVER had to use french for anything, I didn't bother to take the next courses and promptly forgot most of whot I'd learned.
It was of zero benefit to me, I never used it, so when I finally understood it, I was given the chance to drop it, and I did. Oh well, no big loss, really.
To be honest, I think I had more problems learning english, than french. French at least is fairly consistent, other than the whole gender-specific crap which gets confusing since they don't have that stressed nearly as much in english. English, however, wanders all over the place and is not consistent at all, there's rules to the rules to the exceptions of the exception to the rule's exceptions >.<
About how long did it take for you to feel comfortable speaking in that language?
Roughly 10 years? Aaaaaand then I stopped taking it after that year since it was no longer mandatory, and am not really comfortable speaking it at all anymore XD
So I was comfortable for about 6 months XD
Was there ever a time you 'chickened out' because you were not confident in your ability to speak properly?
Never needed it in conversation. Ever. As such, I haven't had any problems with it. I 'chickened out' in the manner that I don't write bilingual when applying for a job, however. Since really, I don't remember enough anymore to claim that >.>
Please sate my curiosity.
Yeurs, and everyone else's I'm sure XD
But yeah, there yeu go, I "was" bilingual for a few months. As strange as that sounds
;
Fortunately, from whot I learned of french, it does have *ONE* use to me... I can read about 1/3rd to 1/2 of any latin based language using context, key words, and so on. For example, english uses 'death' as a word, french uses 'morte', most latin based languages use morte or a variation thereof though. By having two points of reference, the chances are much higher to notice a correlation when used in context.
I may not understand the subtle intricacies of a phrase, but I can at least get the general meaning most of the time without issue due to having learned a scattering of many languages from swedish to german to latin, none of which I can speak at all, really, but it's enough that I can read them.
When spoken, however, generally people speak too fast to keep up with. French especially people talk like literally 2-3 times faster than english people it seems... makes it very difficult to keep track of whot's being said. And I don't mean it just SEEMS that way, but any time I've heard french spoken, they literally say many, many more words in the same space of time. Probably because french has the irritating quality that it adds redundant extra words for no real reason alot of the time... where certain words will be added to others every single time so that there's no reason for the second word to exist at all, but they put it there anyway
And of course in writing where a ton of french words are just english words with an "e" or an "aux" or several other erroneous "silent" letters on the end... so that it's actually pronounced the same, it just takes longer to write out for no apparent reason.
In any case, I'm disappointed english is the world's primary language, swedish is creepy because it SOUNDS like english except none of the words make sense, welsh makes me want to slap whoever came up with it, and ANYTHING can be said in german as an insult from tone alone, and ANYTHING can be said in swedish as sarcastic XD
, and I'm actually learning a LOT, and it comes much more naturally than the Spanish does. I spoke a few phrases I had in my head to a German friend on the phone and he was completely shocked because according to him, I had a native Munich accent. 
But I'm trying not to speak too much (a real challenge for an Extrovert LOL) until I've "absorbed" the language for another few months.
