I appreciate the conversation very much. The zaps, too :).

I also recently achieved a usable level of spanish. Very useful language for me. A lot of literature, music, many many people around the world speak it, and as a bonus, I can largly understand written french, italian, romanian and portuguese.

I would suggest mexican pronunciation - much much clearer than others.

But I am in Europe and the Americas. In Australia asian languages may be a more pressing need.