Indy's many languages
As has been pointed out in this thread, Young Indy speaks twenty-seven languages and, while it's certainly possible that Indy learned several more languages by the 1930s, let's assume that twenty-seven is the limit. T.E. Lawrence once told little Henry Jones that learning the dialect is the key to understanding the people and their history- or something to that effect- so Indy took the good advice to heart. Linguistics was also an academic for Indy in college. I've often tried to label the twenty-seven individual languages based on Indy's travels and I always come up short, mainly because I know very little about linguistics. I'd like to get the ball rolling here by mentioning as many as I can and, hopefully, others can add to the list based on information from the TV series, the novels, the comics, and the films. We have to assume, firstly, that Indy isn't fluent in every language, but can communicate well enough in varying degrees in all twenty-seven languages. Secondly, several dialects can be similar to others, but should be counted seperately, such as the various dialects in South American Spanish or the difference between Austrian and German. So, having said that, here is the list as far as I know: 1- English. 2- possibly Scottish because his father was born in Scotland and Indy married Dierdre, who was Scottish. 3- possibly some Welsh because Indy's father studied King Arthur-lore. 4- some Italian. 5- some French. 6- some Austrian. 7- a little bit of an African dialect (?) he learned while on a hunt with Pres. Roosevelt. 8- some Indian dialect in 1910. 9- Cantonese. 10- Mandarin. 11- Lao Che commented that Indy spoke his language, which might imply Shanghainese- a local variation of Mandarin. 12- Russian- fluently. 13- German, fluently. 14- Greek. 15- modern Egyptian. 16- Aramaic. 17- Spanish, fluently. 18- Quechua- a Peruvian variation of Spanish. Here's where it falls apart for me because I don't know how many other variations of Spanish dialects he speaks. Question: when Indy enilisted in the Belgium army, which language did he use? Was it Dutch or French? Did Indy speak any ancient Egyptian? Some of the languages I've pointed out might be elaborated or dismissed by others, but that's perfectly fine because I'd like to get as complete a list as we can get. I haven't watched the Young Indy series for awhile and I've never read the comics, so any help here is appreciated.