Languages

I have more than a passing interest in the languages of the Bible: the Old Testament Hebrew and the New Testament Greek. Both languages differ noticably from their present day counterparts (except for the alphabet).

I've had the pleasure to visit Spanish-speaking countries and have basic comprehension of the spoken language. I've also taken some lessons to learn the grammar. I can read easy Spanish literature, but I'm afraid my conversational skills have rusted quite much.

There is a host of other languages I've used succesfully to get some food or a bed for a night: Italian, Swedish, Russian, Arabic, English and Latvian. I hope to master them to the point that I can have a meaningful conversation with a native speaker -- English and Swedish are pretty close to that level. A good way to polish (pun intended, being one of the Slavic languages, it is a relative to Russian) language skills is to enjoy using it. Read good books, participate in interesting conversations, write letters.