The Linguist.

I started fancying myself as one when I learnt the Kannada alphabet. Was so proud that I had managed to learn it against my own expectations, given that it has so many twists and turns than even Bangalore roads.

Of course, it helped that the alphabet has the same components as the Devanagari script which is used by Hindi, and I already know Hindi, having learnt it when I was younger and my mind more malleable.

But still, I had gone further than most people are willing to, and that has given me a false sense of purpose, courage and hope. This drove me to consider, just consider, targeting the venerable Chinese language. Its the language of an emergent superpower, and perhaps of the future, and its so mysteriously complex(with its simplified alphabet rumoured to have over 5000 characters), that I knew I should try it.

Of course, this has been at the back of my mind for quite a few months now, even though after my ego-trip of learning Kannada, I had stopped making significant progress in the actual speaking of the language. But something was gnawing at me, oh yeah, that was the small matter of how difficult it is to actually learn Chinese, alphabet, speaking, and all. So I run a search for "how difficult is it to learn Chinese", and this was one really educative link I ended up with. In spite of being written by an American from a European perspective, I think it would hold true for me as well:
Why Chinese is so damn hard

Its truly an eye-opener, and makes good, easy reading. And really makes we want to re-consider my desire to learn Chinese. Who knows, my ego might still get a chance to kill me.