I can speak Italian, French, English, German and Spanish and can read and understand Portuguese, Catalan, Hindi and Urdu. I can read (just read!) Swedish, Dutch, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Polish, Greek and Turkish. I have advanced basic notions of Arabic, Hebrew, Hungarian and Japanese and am currently studying Finnish and Bengali. I don't believe in schools and have developed the ability of teaching myself almost any language with resources I find on the internet. I also invest huge amounts of money in dictionaries and linguistic apps. My latest purchase was a Sanskrit course and my next one will be a Tamil course.
I have a linguistic business (a website, actually) and I love Indian pop music and all things Indian. My dream is to learn, or at least understand, all the main languages of India including Sanskrit, Punjabi, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada etc.
As to Bengali, I'm studying it using Italian grammars and dictionaries, a couple of iPhone apps, an extraordinary audio rendition of the Bible and lots of Bengali films and soaps with English subtitles. At the moment I can only say "thik acche" (ok) but knowing Hindi I am confident that I'll be able to say a lot more in a matter of a few months. I hope my teacher will also become my bondhu!
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