>>8
One of the official languages of the Philippines. Also called "Filipino" to piss off Visayans. The way verbs work blows my mind.

>>12
Completely self-taught. Started when I was a wee weeb and learnt through trial-and-error. There weren't nearly as many resources back then as there are now, so most of my experience involved buying old issues of Weekly Jump and running through with a dictionary to try and figure things out. Everything after that was reading stuff like Tae Kim's guide, Anki decks, a few grammar books here and there, lots of listening practice via NHK News, FM Odawara, god knows how many random Youtubers, and so on. Manga also made for decent reading practice at a lower level, but I've since moved on to light novels and online news. /blog