What Foreign Indo-European Languages Have You Learned?

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Obviously we know English, and if you're native language is not English, don't count that. I'm talking about Indo-European languages you've studied and can (or could) speak and/or write in. For purposes of the poll, if you've learned more than one, select the non-Romance one or non-Germanic one (since these are less exotic). If you've learned, say, French and German, pick Germanic. If you've learned French and Russian, pick Russian. If you've learned German and Russian, pick Russian. If you've learned Russian and Hindu, well, make up your mind!

• Celtic = Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, Cornish, Breton, Old Irish
• North Germanic = Old Norse, Icelandic, Faorese, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish
• Other Germanic = Old English, Frisian, Dutch, Old Low Franconian, Low German (Low Saxon), German, Gothic
• Italic = Latin
• Romance = French, Occitan, Catalan, Aragonese, Castilian Spanish, Portuguese, Rhaeto-Romansch, Italian, Sardinian, Istro-Romanian, Daco-Romanian/Moldavian
• Hellenic = Attic, Koine, modern Greek
• Baltic = Lithuanian, Latvian, Old Prussian
• Slavic = Russian, Belorussian, Ukrainian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian
• Albanian
• Armenian
• Iranian = Farsi, Dari, Pashto, Ossetic, Avestan, Kurdish
• Indo-Aryan = Sanskrit, Hindustani (Hindu, Urdu), Bengali, Nepali, etc.
  

thats all well defined. i have learned something new today, thanks.

since i could not vote for my native languages (slovak, czech) i picked portuguese because i lived there and had to learn it.

but at school i studied german. forgot it all, though. i guess thats the easiest language to forget. i never studied english and i still remember something.

what about Portuguese, Spanish ? Dutch or Flemish, my mother tongue (Germanic sure), a basic Thai.
I speak English I learned, A fluke of Hindi and arabic (just phrases basically)

I have learned Spanish and Latin mainly.

Spanish and Afrikaans, which are Romance and Germanic, respectively.

Yo estudiando espanol y Afrikaans que es idiomas romaticas y alemanicas.

My leer Spanje aan Afrikaans wie tale Romantiek y Duitse, respiektiwe

Welsh and Portuguese, but Welsh was back in school and I've forgotten most of it now. Currently learning Spanish for my holiday to Ecuador.

I have studied Spanish, Italian, French, Irish Gaelic, Russian, Attic Greek, and Latin. I am not fluent in any of them.

I have a short attention span.

I learnt French and German but I am not sure if I should still list German because, like English (have lived in Ireland), I have been living in Germany for a while now so I am not sure if I must still list this as a foreign language for me. Dutch is my mothertongue but I am almost equally fluent in English since my Irish adventure.

@ Loborojo: we come from the same country (Belgium) but must whine a bit here: Flemish is not a language, it is a dialect of Dutch. It is not a language, just like Irish English or American English are also variants of English rather than separate languages. Those who call Flemish a language are usually flemish-nationalists who try to boost their Flemish cultural pride (and I got nothing against that, don't get me wrong - even though I am a belgicist more than a "flamingant")

I don't agree, there is now a trend all the way from Amsterdam to Bachtende Kupe to recognise dialects as languages, which they are. Jordaans is being taught at school in Amsterdam and subsidies are now available because Holland and Flanders is very much worried about the fast exticntion in the last decades of our precious dialects...moa vent toch!! !

Ge hoeft daarvoor geen Flamingant te zijn maar wie trots op wie ge zijt en uw identeit. Waals is eigenlijk ook een dialect want de Walen vinden minder gauw werk dan Vlamingen in Brussel omdat ze geen perfect Frans spreken.

No hard feelings et sans rancune

Ha, great way to mix languages in one post, I like it

I do think dialects should not be classified as languages. Where do you draw the line? Is Limburgs, Achterhoeks or Kortrijks a language then? In the end there is no written form, separate grammar rules etc, so those are all dialects of Dutch in my books. Just like Australians, Americans, Irishmen and Brits all speak English. Of course, you could say Flemish (or "Zuidnederlands") is having strong differences with the Dutch spoken in the Netherlands, but in the end the Flemish dialect has the same written form, a few different words or different pronounciation does not make it a different language IMO.

Well. that is just my opinion of course. Interesting fact maybe: the only "dialect" recognised by the EU as an official minority language, is the Austrian variant of German. When Austria entered the EU this was a specific demand of them to see Austrian German being given a recognised status. Not sure why, because the differences with the Hochdeutsch are not that big or certainly not bigger than the differences between the dutch in Holland and Belgium, or the English spoken in Ireland and Scotland. Still, Austrian german has a specific status by EU laws, while other variants of languages (such as the Flemish variant of Dutch or the Scottish variant of English) do not have that special status. I am not sure why the EU has decided it that way though.

PS: nothing to do with being proud of my roots or so, but I consider myself Belgian rather than Flemish. Hence why I may lack that bit of pattriotism to talk about a Flemish cultural identity. But I respect everyone's opinions so I have no problems whatsoever with those who support a Flemish autonomy.

Belgium as notion of a country is surreal and was a buffer state and an invention with no real identity and yes dialects are languages, besides it was Marc Galle who has verhollndst Flemish, Flemsih still uses ge gij more than je jij which is used at school and in the media.

Irish, American, Kiwi, Ozzie, South African, Hindlish, Singhlish are accents in the English language not dialiects like Flemish language. Read books written by Gerard Walschap, Felix Timmermans to feel the difference of Flemish with Dutch..

Yes, but the gij and other such examples is only verbal language really, in education, government documents, written press etc we all use the standard Dutch.

You are right about Belgium being a buffer state originally, and thus a tiny bit artificial, however I still support the existance of Belgium rather than splitting the country. After all, all non-island states have something artificial about them, borders are just imaginary lines after all with the exception of natural borders such as mountains, seas, etc. In the end Belgium has achieved a very high living standard, a great economy, a good social network, so why would we change that and further split the country when the tendency leans more towards uniting Europe? So while I agree with you about the artificial undertone of the creation of Belgium, I would consider myself a Belgicist rather than a Flemish-nationalist.

daarom heet het ook 'verhollandst', men zou terug naar het Vlaams moeten en ik ben daarom geen flamingant hoor

Linguists solve this problem by just calling them all varieties; the difference between language and dialect has as much to do with social status and politics as it does actual similarity and mutual intelligibility. For example, in pre-Industrial Revolution England and Scotland, many English dialects existed, but a variety spoken around London, with some special literary and élite modifications made along the way, became the standard form. The popular speech (not the speech of the upper classes) continued to move away from this educated variety, becoming Cockney. Before modern transportation and mass communication, the dialects of England differed more than they do now.

General American sounds different from British Received Pronunciation because we Americans didn't pick up some of the British sound changes that came after colonial settlement (for example, r dropping). Also, the standard accent of the United States has greater influence from the accents of the English West.

Learning spanish and I'm starting russian.

Yes, the same evolution is seen here in Belgium. Because of more intense communication, villages fused into one region, people working in other cities and adopting a standard Flemish, makes it that dialects die out. Hence the campaign to save them.