Another point I would add: the Chinese language - to my knowledge - has the most functional and discrete method of forming complex concepts by smashing characters together.  Many times in classes I have made up words or phrases simply by stringing characters together, and lo and behold, my teachers never blinked. It is astounding how easy it is to build your understanding of the language exponentially the more you learn. Add in the total lack of grammatical tidbits like articles and verb tenses, and you come to a language - tens of thousands of characters no withstanding - that is quite intuitive and fun to learn. Just sucks to speak.