Profiles: list of languages

Ok, the forum is not friendly when it comes to adding languages to the native, advanced, intermediate and basic lists. As our Administrator suggested in a message, we should put together a list of languages that would be sufficient for most of us so that the Administrator would be spared of redoing the list one piece at a time to keep it alphabetically ordered (because now it's a mess) every week.

So, which languages should definitely be included in the wave one, which ones do you think will be needed:
(most of these are already there but many aren't)

English, German, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic, Dutch
Finnish, Hungarian
French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Catalan, Basque
Russian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Croatian, Ukrainian
Latin, Ancient Greek, Modern Greek, Hebrew, Ancient Egyptian
Arabic (perhaps a few options for dialects?), Persian, Turkish
Japanese, Mandarin, Cantonese, Korean, Thai, Swahili
Irish, Welsh, Scottish Gaelic

Esperanto is missing in this list of suggestions. If I have other language suggestions, I will add them in this post.

Nice one!
I think Hebrew should be divided as biblical and modern just like Greek. And there is at least one htlaler who learns Akkadian but I have no clue whether he's gonna join us here or how many others need it on the list.

Is there some reason Classical Chinese isn't included along side the other ancient languages? It would also be nice to see who else is learning it for the sake of seeking assistance or collaboration, and there isn't necessarily a 1:1 correlation between Mandarin learners and Classical Chinese learners.

Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian seems to be missing.

When I went to an Esperanto conference, my wife started using Pig Latin with our niece. Do we need Pig Latin?

"Porko latina" scores 7 hits on Google. We wouldn't want to leave anyone out ???

Please leave Pig Latin out...

ONLAYSF !

How many Filipino dialects would you like to include?
To be fair, usefulness starts dropping off after the first 2.
edit: I have no intention of studying anything but the first 2 for many years.

# of speakers
Tagalog22,000,000
Cebuano21,000,000
Ilocano7,700,000
Hiligaynon7,000,000
Waray-Waray3,100,000
Kapampangan2,900,000
Northern Bicol[12]2,500,000
Pangasinan2,434,086
Southern Bicol[13]1,200,000
Chavacano1,200,000
Meranaw1,150,000
Maguindanao1,100,000
Kinaray-a1,051,000
Tausug1,022,000
Surigaonon1,000,000
Masbateño530,000
Aklanon520,000
Ibanag320,000
Español2,000

What an interesting list. How different are they?

For some that is undoubtedly true. But even Ibanag has more speakers than many of the languages others think are just dandy to study. A language with few speakers has disadvantages but still presents inexhaustible opportunities.

I'm only familiar with Cebuano, Tagalog, Waray, and Chavacano. The first three are sisters. Grammar is almost the same, and allot of Waray is Ceubano with consonant shifts. Sometimes in confusing ways.
Cebuano: dili=not, diri=here
Waray: dili=here

Chavacano, baring some differences, is an uninfected form of Spanish.
edit: oops, inflected
I would dive more into these, but then I lose focus

What is the deciding factor for what's included in the list and what's not?

I guess I can understand why something like Ojibwe isn't listed due to the very low number of speakers, but, say Galician, with some 3 million speakers isn't listed either.

R.
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