Looking at my own history, it makes sense. As a kindergartner, I was playing a toy organ with play-by-number song books, and later in grade school I played clarinet. Big mistake: quitting in eight grade. As a side note, whenever I looked up words in the dictionary, I always paid attention to the etymology as well as the definition.

The only subject that I aced in college was Spanish, and the teacher was very good (and a native speaker), but not easy. We started Spanish 101 with 30 students, and ended Spanish 104 with just seven.

Now, 30+ years later, it's a bit rusty, but I can still read it pretty well, and can sort-of understand written Portuguese as well. I can drive down Collins St. in Joliet and easily read the signs on the businesses.

But wait, there's more! One Sunday, in 1993, I walked down to a neighborhood church that I had never visited before, and sat down, as it turned out, behind the music director. She heard me singing the hymns, and asked me immediately after the service if I'd be interested in joining the choir. Then, the next week, the handbell choir was playing, and I was hooked -- I ended up joining both.

More recently, I joined a community chorus that sings a wide range of pieces, and a great many of the old masterworks are not in English. I've found that I could pretty readily pick up pronunciation for a variety of languages, and even though I've never taken German lessons, I can almost figure out what's being sung in Bach or Mozart works -- and when I read an English translation, the relationships between English and German almost jump off the page for me. I still wouldn't be able to put together a coherent sentence in German, though.

If I had the time and money, I'd consider taking German, and maybe even Russian (I taught myself the Cyrillic alphabet at one point, so the alphabet would be the least of my problems).