Polyglot Meme

James F. McGrath tagged me in a list of linguistic prowess. Apparently there’s a place in the new facebook to list the languages you “know.” Generally speaking, I’m pulled into the lates versions of facebook kicking and screaming and spend days learning how to turn off “new ways to share” my information that each iteration of the site sets in motion. BUT, here’s a list of languages that I purport to “know” in some undefined sense:

• Akkadian (Old Bab, Old Assyrian, and Standard Bab, some peripheral)
• Aramaic (including Old, Imperial, Targumic and Syriac)
• French
• German
• Greek (koine)
• Hebrew
• Hittite (including Luwian)
• Italian
• Moabite (do two inscriptions make a “language”?)
• Phoenician (including Punic)
• Spanish
• Ugaritic

Not quite the list that James reports but still a respectable baker’s dozen if you include English. I’d also like to include Sumerian and Hurrian on the list, but I’ll leave them to the side since they’re such minefields of research. Additionally, my knowledge of Arabic and Ge’ez is just enough to be dangerous.

While James has left an open invite for any who read his blog, I’d really like to see what the abnormally interesting Duane Smith has in his linguistic toolbox.