About learning Spanish

 In his diary, John Quincy Adams told of how President Thomas Johnson had regaled dinner guests, urging that French and Spanish be the primary courses in the education of young men.

Spanish was so easy, Jefferson said, that he’d learned it by taking a volume of Don Quixote and a grammar on a voyage to Europe — 19 days at sea.

Adams reported the president’s remarks and said:

            But Mr. Jefferson tells large stories …

Having lived in a Spanish-speaking neighborhood for five years, I’d say Jefferson’s story was enormous. But I agree with his sentiment about the learning of languages and regret my lack of education.

Source: A Treasury of the World’s Great Diaries, edited by Philip Dunaway and Mel Evans; Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1957, p. 196. The entry is dated Nov. 23, 1803.