Many of us have entertained the idea of expanding our horizons. Learning a foreign language is an obvious option. Experts usually advise that you should learn a language because you're also interested in the culture and the country. But remember: Although you can get by as a tourist in, possibly, weeks, mastering a language is a long-term commitment taking years, not months. The US Foreign Service Institute has studied what makes a language easy to learn Their research shows that, on the one hand, the language's difficulty depends on the similarity to the native language. However, it also depends on the complexity of the language you want to learn. The US Foreign Service Institute has also classified languages in degrees of difficulty for English speakers. The hardest languages for Americans to learn were Chinese, Korean, Japanese and Arabic. The easiest languages to learn were Afrikaans, Italian, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese, and Spanish.

Feb. 28—Growing up in Modesto, Mimi Whang never gave much thought to the McHenry Mansion, but seeing Japanese exchange students interested in it made her appreciate it more. Whang, who is half Japanese, had wanted to gain a deeper connection to her cultural roots and language given Modesto's small Japanese population. Last year, she participated in a student exchange program in Kurume, Japan — ...