You'll know me from HTLAL as Ogrim, here I am Ogrim2, but the same person with the same passion for languages, cultures, literature, music and whatever goes on on the European stage. Currently my main focus is Russian, I have spent two-three years now studying this marvellous language more or less seriously, and the more I learn the more I love both the language and the great culture it represents. My other true passion is Romansh (Big Dog, you don't have Romansh in the list of languages, if you ever do an update I'd be really happy to see it included). Why spending time on this language, which is spoken by only 60.000 persons in the "remote" valleys of Eastern Switzerland? Simply because it is beautiful and fascinating, because it represents a unique minority culture - the heritage of Latin speakers settling in the Alpine valleys a couple of thousand years ago. Taking into account the small number of speakers, it is a vital language that has produced various good writers and poets, as well as musicians and even athletes (most of the medals won by Switzerland in the latest Winter Olympics were won by people from "Rumantschia"). I guess I am very lucky in one sense: I have to engage with four to five languages actively every day. I am married to a Spanish woman, so I speak Spanish at home, but also Norwegian to my two kids. I work in an international organisation were English and French are the official working languages, and I interact orally and in writing in both languages every day. I live in France, but a 10-minute drive from Germany, so I cross the border once or twice every week, thus making good use of my German. Sometimes juggling the various languages more or less at once can be a bit tiring, but I wouldn't change my situation for anything else. What more to say? I did a Master in Romance Philology way back before the existence of internet and the cyberspace, I try to read as much as I can in all the languages I dabble in, including Catalan (another big passion), Italian and Latin. My only frustration right now is that I started on (modern) Greek last year, but I had to put it aside earlier this year because of lack of time. However, it is not forgotten and the day will come when I cannot resist the Siren call of Greek any longer... I won't stop taking an active part in HTLAL, but it is great to see an alternative, and that is why I decided to sign up. This shouldn't be a competing forum, but a complementary one where we can meet up (and vent our frustration whenever HTLAL is slow or doesn't work
Wow, that's very impressive Ogrim2 - welcome! I added Romansh to the bottom of the list. It will be sorted into alphabetical order at some time in the future, but at least you can use it now.
