Ranking them by my proficiency:
The Germanic language group consists of three sub-groups: North Germanic, West Germanic, and East Germanic. North Germanic includes the Scandanavian languages: Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic, and Danish. East Germanic included Gothic, which died out in the mid-nineteenth century. West Germanic includes German, Dutch, English, Frisian, Flemish, and a number of minor languages found around the Netherlands and Belgium.
All of my Germanic studies involved West Germanic languages.
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Although German is my second foreign language, it was the first one which I studied seriously and it is the foreign language which I am most proficient at. Unfortunately, since earning my BA German in 1975 and doing one year of post-graduate study, I have had practically no opportunity to use my German either professionally or privately, until I gained access to the Web a few years ago.
I was saddened to learn that German is no longer being taught in our local public schools, except for a few rare exceptions. Even at the community college, they only offer one year. This is even more unfortunate, since our younger son wants to learn German.
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Old English is the West Germanic language that was spoken in Saxon Britain from about the sixth century CE to the twelfth century. Its demise started with the introduction of French through the Norman Invasion. Through the subsequent linguistic stratification of English society between the French-speaking ruling class and the Saxon-speaking peasantry, English developed a dual vocabulary in which many terms have both a "five-dollar" form, usually of French origin, and a coarse common "Anglo-Saxon" form, usually of Germanic origin.
I took the one-semester course that our university English department offered in Old English. I had already been studying German for several years and my German training helped me a lot. As in Modern English, the verb system in Old English was very Germanic. Cognates between English and German made a lot more sense to me once I could see them in their earlier forms, as did some of the stranger irregular forms in Modern English.
About a year ago, something suddenly occured to me. I had always known that English is very definitely a Germanic language. Then it hit me that most of its vocabulary seems to be of Romantic origin, mainly because of the infusion of French after the Norman Conquest. As a result, it is actually easier for an English speaker to learn French or Spanish vocabulary than it is to learn German vocabulary. I even found that my study of French improved my English spelling, that shows how Frenchified English has become.
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Dutch is a West Germanic language spoken in the Netherlands. According to my parents' old Encyclopedia Britannica, it was considered a northern dialect of German until about 400 years ago, when it began to develop its own literature. As it turns out, it is one of several similar "small" languages in the area of the Netherlands and Belgium.
For a brief time in college, I investigated Dutch after viewing a documentary in which I saw a speech being given in Dutch and I noticed the strong similarities with German. Unfortunately, Dutch was going through a language reform at the time, so there was almost nothing available at the bookstores. Finally, I was able to find an old Dutch grammar in the university library -- printed in Spanish!
Although I have not studied Dutch since then, I find that I can usually read Dutch web pages. Interestingly, while I found my German to help me greatly in deciphering Dutch, a friend who had also studied German found that English helped him more.
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The Romance languages are derived from Latin and the language family is named after the ancient capital of the Latin-speaking world, Rome. Member families include Latin, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, and Romatsch, the fourth language of Switzerland.
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I took French in my first two years in college in order to start rounding out my language training (I was continuing with German at the same time, having just finished two years of high school German). Although I feel no particular affection for the language, it did help my English spelling and I have retained a certain measure of proficiency. I am still able to read it, to follow some of the dialogue in French films, and to converse rudimentarily (eg, to speak over our kids' heads with my wife, who was a French major). Ironically, I used it a lot when I worked in Germany (we had a lot of French workers) and it has also been the only language I have been called upon to translate at my present company.
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Since my wife's family speaks Spanish, that is the language in which I am currently trying to come up to speed. The only formal training I've had in Spanish has been one conversational course in seventh grade (1963), one semester in college (1971), and now the next three semesters continued after 28 years, starting in 1998. In the meantime, it had been self-tuition and OJT.
Years ago, I had obtained some public-domain programs for studying Spanish vocabulary and verb conjugations, which I have used off-and-on over the years. When I recently started concentrating again on Spanish in 1998, I found Timm Ericksonn's "SPANVERB.EXE" to be expecially helpful in learning and practicing the conjugations of regular and irregular verbs. However, I found a few errors in it, so I contacted Timm Ericksonn (that is a tale in itself, made possible only by the Internet) and he made the corrections and sent me the latest, corrected version.
Timm Ericksonn gave me permission to distribute SPANVERB, so I'm offering it for you here.
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The slavic language family includes Russian, Ukranian, Polish, and Czech. They were derived from Old Church Slavonek.
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I studied Russian in university for two years over 20 years ago. It was not an easy language to study, because the vocabulary contains few cognates with my other languages and the consonant combinations can appear formidable. Otherwise, the grammar was interesting, especially the verb system, which is based primarily on the idea of perfection, i.e. whether the action is completed.
In college, we had had a friend from Yugoslavia, so during my second year of Russian, I briefly researched Serbo-Croat. The Russian was especially helpful, since the only book I could find on the subject was in Russian.
As it is, the only Serbo-Croat I learned was what our friend taught me to ask when I would call her (the mother of the family she was staying with could not speak English): "Je Lidia tamo?" ("Is Lidia there?") When I had occasion to use it, I must have sounded so good that the mother thought I spoke the language and immediately responded in fluent Serbo-Croat, much to my dismay.
Last we heard, Lidia had returned to Yugoslavia around 1980. We have no idea what has become of her.
This is something of a misclassification, since all three I've listed here are from different language families.
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Vini, vidi, studui.
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I had studied Koine, which is the "common Greek" that developed from classical Greek and became the universal language in the Roman Empire. Our reading text was the New Testament, which was written in Koine. All that I can say in Koine are John 1:1 and our professor's favorite sample sentence:
" o didaskoloV ton oinon pinein." (the teacher drinks the wine.)
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I took a one-year course at university which was basically conversational modern Hebrew. The grammar was quite simple and unremarkable.
One thing I learned was that most of the Hebrew vocabulary is based on triads -- groups of three consonants each (remember that there are no letters for vowels). An older programmer I worked with had lived in Israel for a couple years and had learned Hebrew before going. He also knew about these triads, which knowledge he would turn to his advantage when playing Scrabble in Hebrew. He may not have always known what the word meant, but it usually did exist.
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My ancestry is primarily Irish and Scottish, so this interest is kind of personal. We often see Gaidhlig (Scottish Gaelic) at the Scottish Games and I would like to understand what I am seeing, or at least be able to pronounce it.
I have found a page which is a good starting point, the Gaelic Languages Info page [http://www.ceantar.org/], which offers links to web resources for Scottish, Irish, Welsh, and Manx. I've downloaded their list of Irish and Scottish proverbs, which I use in my email signature.
One of my old linguistics textbooks says that the Celtic languages are divided into two basic groups: P-Celtic and Q-Celtic. It also says that although they are part of the Indo-European language family, they are very different from the other languages in that family and that it appears that they had absorbed features of the older, non-Indo-European languages with which they had come into contact.
In most cases, conquering foreigners have tried to eradicate the indiginous Celtic language; surviving Celtic languages either just barely escaped extinction or had to be resurrected. This short history was written by Roibeard O Maolalaigh, Lecturer in Department of Celtic and Director of Centre for Irish Studies at the University of Edinburgh, in the Hugo Simplified Language Course, Scottish Gaelic in Three Months (1996):
In the Middle Ages the poets' schools gave instruction in Gaelic to writers and the families of the aristocracy, the substance of which survived until the eighteenth century. In 1709, the Scottish Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge was set up in Edinburgh under royal charter to establish schools in order to teach reading and writing to Gaelic speakers. The aim of the society was to teach them English, so Gaelic and Latin were forbidden in the schools. Instead, this society became a support for Gaelic, encouraging and helping both teaching and publishing Gaelic books.The Education Act of 1872 gave no place or opportunity to Gaelic, requiring every child to go to school, where English was the only language of instruction. In 1918, a new act gave some status to Gaelic; the educational authority in every Gaelic-speaking district was obliged to make adequate provision for the teaching of Gaelic. In 1946, Gaelic was placed on the curriculum of a few city schools, especially in Galsgow, for the first time. In 1949, Inverness-shire established the post of Gaelic organizer in a scheme for bilingualism.
Welsh was my first experience with a Celtic language. This is one of my odder language studies. My Russian professor, Harvey Mayer, wanted to study Welsh, so he organized an informal seminar of a few students, which ended up meeting only a few times.
All I remember is (Please pardon the spelling, but it has been over 20 years):
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There are some classes available in Scottish Gaelic in various places in the world, but none that I've been able to find locally. The only sources available to me are teach-yourself books.
The main problem I have is with pronounciation. Gaelic spelling appears deceptive to the beginner. Most of the vowels written are not actually pronounced, but rather affect the consonants next to them through a process called lenition. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be clear guidelines for whether a given vowel will be pronounced or will cause lenition. One book gives phonetic transcriptions for some words, but not for many. I have looked at a number of dictionaries, none of which include phonetic transcriptions.
One web resource I found is "Uilleam Uallas", a short reading selection in Scots Gaelic taken from an old history book [ http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/gaidhlig/ionnsachadh/leughadh/uu.html]. It recounts the first run-in Uilleam Uallas had with the English. In English, we know him as William Wallace. And now you know the rest of the story.
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I learned a little Japanese in connection with martial arts training. I followed up with an overview of Japanese grammar and with learning to read some of the Chinese characters, Kanji, that the Japanese write with.
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Needless to say, this is an entirely artificial language. Linguist Marc Okrand created it for the third Star Trek movie, "The Search for Spock," and has continued developing it for the subsequent movies and for the other Star Trek series.
A description of the language, including a grammar and vocabulary, are provided in Okrand's book "The Klingon Dictionary." This has been followed by audio tapes and by projects by the Klingon Language Institute [http://www.kli.org/].
Although I have looked over the grammar, I have several other study goals of higher priority. I only know a few words, which I can sometimes catch in a movie or on one of the shows.
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First uploaded on 2000 March 21.
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