[smc]

I can't believe I missed this thread for so long. I decided at a young age that I wanted to be a polyglot, and so languages became my academic specialty. I read some and read/speak others. When I was young, beginning at junior high school age, I spent a lot of time trying to teach myself to read new languages. I went on to study Classics as an undergraduate and then got a PhD in ancient studies, which meant learning most of the Canaanite/Semitic dialects of the ancient Near Eastern world (Akkadian, Hittite, Moabite, Phoenician, Chaldean, etc.), as well as Hebrew, Aramaic, and Sanskrit. I taught Ancient Greek and Latin at the university level. In addition, I have learned to speak and read German and French (fluently), and I'm reasonably proficient in Spanish and Italian. I can get by in Portuguese and Romanian, and lately I've been challenging myself with other Germanic languages (since English is a Germanic language, and I know German): these include Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish, which I try to read on a regular basis. I've never learned any Asian languages, except for a bit of Vietnamese when I volunteered to teach English to immigrants from Vietnam a long time ago. They mostly spoke French, too, but I insisted on picking up some of their native language.