I have graduated in Indogermanistik (historical linguistics, with a focus on Indo-European languages) as a major subject, with general (typological) linguistics and speech science as minor subjects.
I possess general reading ability in several languages, some basic working knowledge in many others, especially ancient and medieval Indo-European languages, and know a little bit about very many languages overall. I can also fake to some extent various German dialects, and find my way through languages (such as Portuguese, Dutch or Swedish) which happen to be closely related to languages I'm already well familiar with. Using a grammar and dictionary, I can make my way through texts in most languages I'm at least a little bit familiar with, even if I may be slow. So, I have a lot of dormant linguistic potential that I can activate if necessary. However, even my spoken English is heavily accented and far from perfect, other languages I've seriously studied to any advanced level are just rusty, and overall I'm simply too lazy to be a real polyglot, so I think my Babel box is fairly realistic and doesn't overstate my skills. For various purposes, however, even very limited competence in a language can be useful, especially for purposes that are relevant for the project Wiktionary.
