 He finished his undergraduate studies in comparative Indo-European linguistics at the University of Ljubljana in 1958, and completed his Ph.D. in Germanic Linguistics at the same institution in 1965.He continued with post-doctoral studies at the University of Copenhagen (1959–1961), University of Zagreb (1962–1963), University of Reykjavik (1965–1966) and Harvard University (1969–1970).Orešnik is an internationally recognized specialist in comparative linguistics.