I’ve always been fascinated by languages.
Most likely, my family of origin had a great part to play in this, given the German heritage on my father’s side and the mixed English, French, Breton, and Italian heritage on my mother’s side. And then came computer languages and parsers courtesy of my undergraduate degree in math and computer science, and finally, my trek through ancient languages (Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, Akkadian, Ugaritic, and Phoenician). Thanks to some interesting people I met among the crew of Holland America Lines, I’ve dabbled in Indonesian, too.
Being a glutton for punishment, I’m now working on Arabic.
Mandarin is next.