Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Polyglot Meme

POLYGLOT MEME: How could I resist this? James McGrath writes:
And so I've decided to start a meme, asking those tagged [basically, anyone who wants to] to list every language that they have made some sort of concerted effort to learn, even if they didn't get beyond the first lesson or so, or even if they are still learning it. No need to specify the degree of fluency in the blog post - if readers are curious how much Swahili you know, they can ask.
I'm limiting the list to languages I learned to the point where I could use them with reasonable facility, although I'm pretty rusty on some of them now. I've made some effort with some other out-of-the-way ones (e.g., Elvish, Enochian, and Esperanto), but not to that point. And I'm not done! Judeo-Arabic is on the agenda next.

Akkadian
Arabic (Classical)
Aramaic (numerous ancient dialects including Syriac)
Coptic
French
German
Greek (ancient)
Hebrew (biblical, epigraphic, modern)
Hittite
Latin
Northwest Semitic (epigraphic Moabite, Ammonite, etc.)
Phoenician/Punic
Spanish
Sumerian
Ugaritic

I don't really think of HTML as a language, but others are including it in their lists, so I note it as an aside.