not that this pertains to anything in particular, but

In a perfect world I'd be quintilingual . I realize that in my 23 years of living, I have, at various points in my life, spoken and studied up to five different languages. Here they are in the order that I began to speak them: Tagalog, English, Spanish, Japanese, and French. And not only did I speak them, I was actually fluent in at least two of these at some point or another, or at least reached a high enough level of proficiency that could be mislabeled as "fluency" in layman's terms. And what's most disappointing is the loss of ability I've experienced. English is my second language, it's overridden my first. And honestly, the years I've spent studying Japanese are now rapidly swirling down the drain in, I guess what is the opposite of fruition.

So there you have it - five languages, all of which I've dabbled, only one of which I've actually retained. And imagine all that lost potential. But learning languages is hard - even harder to maintain knowledge of them, especially in environments that don't directly necessitate their use. Which is why I blame America. But no, seriously, even if I had the wherewithal, elbow grease, know-how, and downright drive and motivation to keep practicing and studying these languages, reaching that desired perfect summit of being quintilingual would still be next to impossible to achieve. But oh, how glorious would that be, indeed.