Oy!

I had 2 years of German in HS and applied myself to learning some Anglo-Saxon and Middle English. At Indiana University I studied a little Latin, French, and Italian. Then I learnt some Spanish around the racetracks and horsefarms. Then I married I guy from India and learnt a little of this, a little of that of Bengali, Hindi, and Sanskrit. Most importantly, I learnt to make all the sounds you gotta make in Sanskrit (there are tons!), so I was able to teach myself good pronunciation when it came to Gaelic. I already understood the concept of broads and slenders, you see. Native speakers always freak when they find out I have never studied Gaelic - these guys from Donegal thought I was FROM Donegal after I'd sung about 6 songs from there!

Now, I'm not actually fluent in any one of these languages, but my English vocab is pretty dang big as a result of all my studies! It's really neat when you see similarities between them all. Oddly, a lot of Irish words remind me of the Sanskrit equivalents, or the Old High German. Take anam and atman, Irish and Sanskrit, meaning soul. Pretty wild, eh?! Only problem is, reading, speaking, or singing one language brings words percolating in from all the others, so I have to concentrate to stick to one.

ciarili

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