I am German and 31 years old. I have not settled for it but it just happened to me. I have studied History, Latin and English. Unfortunately you don't learn English there. There were only stupid, boring and ugly topics that accidently were held in English, so my English isn't that great. My first foreign language was Russian. And I liked it. Sometimes more than English (in school).
I am a huge fan of Tolkien. Since the dawn of mankind and the invention of language and letters, he has written down the best thing ever engraved in letters. I agree with him in everything concerning language. For me, nice and interesting languages are:
* Elvish (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTgwvadr3J0)
* Finnish (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcrcx1abm2M)
* Hawaiian
* Greek and Latin (ancient and modern) for indo-european etymological interests
* Dutch (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le6uFnLwqYU)
* Scandinavian, old and modern (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFAJV0DIpS0 - listen to it with a reverb effect - aweful!)
* Old English (
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfaEGU45lKA&feature)
* British English
* Gaelic, since I am a huge fan of Scotland and Irish and Scottish folk and pipes&drums
French is said to be a nice sounding language. Many people around me maintain this. I can't understand this. I don't like it. In fact, I can't listen to it longer than a minute (TV and such). It is not smooth and fluent. First, everything sounds like "la femme l'amur tutu lala", secondly it is not a straight flow of words (as many people maintain), it's more like a double-backing rabbit. OK, German is even worse for a non-native ear...
Among German dialects I absolutely hate hillbilly Bavarian (and hillbilly Austrian, but Vienna dialect is fine) and Cologne. Dreadful. The whole world thinks whole Germany is like that. Idiotic Oktoberfest, Lederhosen, Bier and that ear cancer causing Blasmusik. Terrible. In opposite to that I like high German, the north sea dialect and cultivated Saxonian.
I wonder and always wanted to know if a non-European person notices a difference between Dutch and German. When a bilingual person reads out a German text and suddenly changes to Dutch. People of what language would notice the change?