r/languagelearning • u/SharkHead38 • 2d ago
Discussion Most obscure language you/someone else is learning? Why?
I remember meeting someone that was learning specifically Moldovan Romanian since Moldova and its culture was a big interest to them, and I'm curious what other people's reasons for learning obscure languages are, and what they are.
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u/abu_doubleu English C1, French B2 🇨🇦 Russian, Persian Heritage 🇰🇬 🇦🇫 2d ago
It's not "obscure" but rather uncommon, I am learning Kyrgyz because I live in Kyrgyzstan. In the capital very few who are not ethnically Kyrgyz speak it, rather preferring Russian. I would like to become bilingual
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u/igorrto2 🇷🇺(N),🇬🇧(C1),🇯🇵(B2),🇨🇳(A2),🇬🇷(A1),🇰🇷🇲🇰(below A1) 1d ago
I am considering learning one of the middle Asian languages in the future (I live in Moscow and I see immigrants from Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan all the time). I am thinking of learning one of these languages, which one would be more useful for communication?
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u/abu_doubleu English C1, French B2 🇨🇦 Russian, Persian Heritage 🇰🇬 🇦🇫 1d ago
Hello!
Tajik has a major bonus compared to the other languages because it is an Indo-European language, and with that said, it's also one of the easiest of them (no grammatical gender, no cases, very easy pronunciation). Many Russian speakers can finish the basics easily after just a few weeks. It's a dialect of Persian, so you also get the benefit of understanding Afghans and Iranians and their vast repertoire of literature, as many translations to Tajik exist (as you are likely aware, Tajik used Cyrillic while those dialects use Perso-Arabic).
But I am very biased since my father speaks Persian.
Kyrgyz and Uzbek are also great if you have a keen interest in those cultures or languages. Learning one makes the other Turkic languages much easier in the future, as they are quite similar, the divergence was recent. Kazakh and Kyrgyz are mutually intelligible, as are Uzbek and Uyghur. But the grammar is more difficult as they are totally different from Indo-European languages (agglutination, for starters).
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u/igorrto2 🇷🇺(N),🇬🇧(C1),🇯🇵(B2),🇨🇳(A2),🇬🇷(A1),🇰🇷🇲🇰(below A1) 1d ago
Thank you for the reply! I didn’t know Tajik was so different. Also the fact that it uses Cyrillic can make it so much easier for learning
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u/Unlucky-Edge3203 1d ago
Broo you’re learning Macedonian??
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u/igorrto2 🇷🇺(N),🇬🇧(C1),🇯🇵(B2),🇨🇳(A2),🇬🇷(A1),🇰🇷🇲🇰(below A1) 1d ago
Yup. Started less than a month ago though. Здраво!
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u/Unlucky-Edge3203 1d ago
That’s amazing! I’m learning Russian btw. If you want, we can teach eachother? I’m a native Macedonian speaker
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u/Misiekshvili r/LearnPolishwithMichał 🇵🇱 2d ago
I'm learning Georgian because I want to communicate with locals.
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u/tinyboiii 🇬🇧🇬🇪 native | 🇫🇮 A1 | 🇳🇱 B1 1d ago
Yay I’m happy to see Georgian here! მოგესალმები! მაგარია რომ ქართულს სწავლობ. Good luck! 🍀
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u/liquid_woof_display N 🇵🇱 | C2 🇬🇧 | C1 🇨🇿 | Learning 🇦🇱 1d ago
I started learning Albanian and Georgian recently but I wasn't able to focus on both at the same time so I ditched Georgian for now. Albanian is also obscure, maybe even more than Georgian, and I'm learning it because it looks interesting and I like the vibe of Albania
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u/No-Tomatillo8601 1d ago
You live in Georgia? I'm learning too and I'm so curious where you moved from!
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u/shablul7 2d ago
I don't know if I'll ever start it but I really hope to learn Guugu Yimithirr one day.
It's the Australian aboriginal language that the word "kangaroo" came from, but the reason I wanted to learn it is because I heard that they don't have simple directions in it and use the four cardinal directions instead. I thought it's a cool way to always know where you are lol
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u/Vazaha_Gasy 🇺🇸N | 🇲🇬C1 | 🇫🇷C1 2d ago
Several dialects of Malagasy do this too with cardinal directions!
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u/shablul7 2d ago
Awesome to hear! I was guessing that there are probably more since I found one in the first place 😂 but nice to actually know them!
I wonder how it developed in the first place, since it feels pretty counterintuitive 🤔
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u/Vazaha_Gasy 🇺🇸N | 🇲🇬C1 | 🇫🇷C1 1d ago
On the contrary I think it’s more intuitive! Directions like “left, right” are dependent on whoever is receiving the directions and which direction they’re facing. Cardinal directions are absolute and never change as they’re fixed on the sun.
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u/tendeuchen Ger, Fr, It, Sp, Ch, Esp, Ukr 1d ago
Cardinal directions are absolute and never change as they’re fixed on the sun.
At the North Pole, the sun rises and sets in the South.
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u/Vazaha_Gasy 🇺🇸N | 🇲🇬C1 | 🇫🇷C1 1d ago
I think you’re missing the point. In the context of language development for a community, North will always be North, South will be South, etc. Even as seasons change and the sun changes position they still can still orient themselves by the stars, so those cardinal directions never change.
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u/LittleDhole1 1d ago
How mutually intelligible are the "dialects" of Malagasy? Are they technically separate languages that get grouped as "dialects" for sociopolitical reasons (like the "dialects" of Italian and Arabic)?
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u/Vazaha_Gasy 🇺🇸N | 🇲🇬C1 | 🇫🇷C1 1d ago
For the most part they are all mutually intelligible, though some vary quite a bit, especially the Antandroy dialect in the Deep South. It’s cool because Madagascar is one of the only countries in Africa with only one native language that is spoken across the country!
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u/SharkHead38 2d ago
Oh, that's cool! I think I have heard of that property in a language before. Which part of Australia is it spoken in? I'm from Australia myself.
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u/Distinct-Broccoli-15 2d ago
Not Australian but it would be nice if the indigenous languages were spoken more along with the local variant of English. I'm guessing it might be hard but I would love to try and learn if I ever moved there.
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u/MysticGuava 1d ago
It is a settler colony and the colonialist white supremacist attitudes still persist and permeate through here, much like America. There are conservation efforts happening but unfortunately it is a lot more fringe than one would hope. So many people are still incredibly racist, and the country voted no only a couple years ago to have a treaty with Indigenous peoples.
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u/Ilovescarlatti 1d ago
I'm learning Te Reo Māori and get hostility or incomprehension sometimes for pronouncing place names correctly rather than the Pākehā/European way.
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u/fadinglightsRfading 1d ago
I heard that they don't have simple directions in it and use the four cardinal directions instead.
is it any different in concept to north-east-south-west?
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u/LittleDhole1 1d ago
"Cardinal directions" are North, East, South, West, and combinations thereof.
What the original comment means is that Guugu Yimithirr doesn't have words for relative directions ("left" and "right"), but exclusively uses cardinal directions to denote positions of things, e.g. "there's an ant on your south-west foot".
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u/Own-News1650 2d ago
Started learning Scottish Gàidhlig a few years back and had to stop due to life occurring. I want to pick it back up so badly. I love the way the language sounds and feels in the mouth. I gave Irish a try several years before that and it’s really fun to see the differences and similarities there.
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u/CatsWearingTinyHats 1d ago
Do it! I’m learning Irish and now able to read chapter books and understand about 60% of what native speakers say in real life conversation.
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u/Fast-Ads-7587 1d ago
That's awesome. Which resources did you use, if you don't mind me asking?
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u/CatsWearingTinyHats 1d ago
Everything I can get my hands on!! (listed below roughly in recommended order).
I cycle through different things so that I don’t get bored/stuck, and then I circle back later to stuff that hasn’t stuck (especially with a lot of the grammar stuff!)
I think the other big thing that helped was I spent a few days at the outset figuring out the basic sounds of Irish so that I could “sound out” words in my head and read them even if I couldn’t understand them yet.
In addition to the stuff below, I’ve taken some short live online courses for listening/speaking practice but honestly didn’t learn much new stuff from them.
Books:
-Christian Brothers’ Basic Steps in Irish grammar workbook (very cheap)
-Gaeilge Gan Stro, Beginner’s + Intermediate volumes (comes with online sound files)
-Gramadach Gan Stro (all in Irish but the online version has English translations!)
-Nancy Stenson, Basic Irish workbook (Routledge)
-Céimeanna Comhrá books, volumes 1-4 (Ulster dialect)
-Progress in Irish
-Nancy Stenson, Intermediate Irish workbook (Routledge)
-Learning Irish by Michael O-something; comes with sound files (Cois Farraige dialect)
-Colloquial Irish 1 & 2 (Routledge) (comes with sound files) (Conamara dialect)
Some books I’ve only skimmed so far but that look really good: Gaschaint (everyday language, aimed at parents); Cruinnscríobh na Gaeilge (grammar/usage, all in Irish); Lean Ar Aghaidh (aimed at primary school teachers).
(And if you’re in Ireland, check out your local library! You can get a decent number of ebooks and Irish language publications, and kids’ books are great for learning).
Apps + self-paced classes:
-Pimsleur Irish (Munster dialect) (I highly recommend Pimsleur!)
-Rosetta Stone (helped a ton with listening comprehension)
-DuoLingo
-Ranganna.com (the online version of the Gaeilge Gan Stro/Gramadach Gan Stro books)
-FutureLearn’s DCU Irish 101-108 and 201-205 self-paced classes (currently up to 202)
--Learn-Irish.net site (free)
-Glossika (for passive listening comprehension practice) (Conamara dialect)
-Mango (free for Irish -have only a done a couple lessons but it seems good)
Other:
-teanglann.ie
-abair.ie
-TG4 player (there are some kids’ shows in Irish with Irish subtitles available)
-tuairisc.ie (free -news articles)
-LeighAnois.ie (free) (some kids’ books with audio + a TON of little news articles in Irish -great for building vocab; they also have some teaching materials/worksheets but they’re most for small children).
-the TEG website -(free) under the achmhainní/resources tabs, there are “sample teaching resources” tab with worksheets, audio files, etc. Plus you can check out the sample tests for each level. I’ve been working my way through the materials.
-a LOT of reading - I really liked the Tintin and Asterix comics books in Gaeilge, and just reading random things like job postings, etc., whatever I’ve been able to manage at my current level.
-Now You’re Talking (90s tv show you can find on YouTube -there are accompanying audio files and workbook pages you can find online too -have only watched a few episodes but mean to watch the rest (Ulster dialect)
-the TEG materials on the SNAS.ie website by Maynooth University (I’ve only done some of these but they seem good; I think the audio is the same as the stuff on the TEG website).
-TG4 Foghlaim (educational videos for kids)
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u/Vegetable-One-442 🇩🇪N|🇬🇧C1|🇲🇫B2|🇪🇸🇳🇱B1|🇸🇰A2 1d ago
I'm planning to study Scottish Gaelic too! For me it's the support of the independence movement that makes me want to learn it. Even as someone that lives outside of Scotland you can still keep it alive through other ways. It's so important that these types of languages get the recognition they deserve. No language is ever "unimportant".
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u/parrotopian 1d ago
I speak Irish and can understand a lot of Scottish Gaelic, they are very similar
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u/Nowordsofitsown N:🇩🇪 L:🇬🇧🇳🇴🇫🇷🇮🇹🇫🇴🇮🇸 2d ago
I once took a month long intensive language course of Faroese in the Faroe Islands. And two seminars at other European universites.
I also took a seminar on Norn, the extinct Nordic language from the North of the British Isles.
The West Scandinavian languages are just so pretty and interesting.
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u/SharkHead38 2d ago
Ooo! I see that you're learning quite a few nordic languages, how does Norn compare to them?
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u/Nowordsofitsown N:🇩🇪 L:🇬🇧🇳🇴🇫🇷🇮🇹🇫🇴🇮🇸 2d ago
Well, we have hardly any texts in Norn. During the seminar we read (= tried to make sense of) a song that was written down by somebody who didn't even speak or understand Norn, using English spellings. Very challenging.
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u/Stoic-outsider 1d ago
Faroese is indeed interesting. Rather like Icelandic with lots of Danish words thrown in and with marginally simpler grammar than Icelandic. I had a professor who taught the language once.
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u/Nowordsofitsown N:🇩🇪 L:🇬🇧🇳🇴🇫🇷🇮🇹🇫🇴🇮🇸 1d ago
The pronounciation is lovely. Similar things happen in similar places compared to Icelandic, but some of it is just nuts.
Who was your professor? Someone known in the field?
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u/Stoic-outsider 1d ago
Michael P. Barnes. He's written a number of papers on Faroese, I believe some were made into a book at some point. He's also written an esteemed grammar-reader of Old Norse and a book on Norn.
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u/Nowordsofitsown N:🇩🇪 L:🇬🇧🇳🇴🇫🇷🇮🇹🇫🇴🇮🇸 1d ago
The name does ring a bell. Very likely read something of his during a seminar.
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u/Stoic-outsider 1d ago
I disposed of most of my Faroese books (school reading books and similar) recently. Otherwise I would have been happy to send them to you. There are (or were) some lovely anthologies available.
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u/Tiomaidh Español (catracho) | ~ Français, Bahasa Indonesia, Gàidhlig 1d ago
Never expected to see Norn mentioned here! I'm not a serious student of it, but I'm more aware than most, have thumbed through a few books/papers, and I got to dance and sing the Hildina ballad in Orkney a couple months ago. I'd love to take it more seriously, but have the problem that even if I did get conversational Norn there'd be very few people to use it with.
You might like to know about /r/nynorn or the Discord server (invite link).
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u/OnlyInEye 2d ago
Tagalog. Its not obscure but when i started there were so little tools in 2020. Literature is often in english with some pieces in Tagalog. Its not obscure obscure but i hardly ever hear people learning due to majority speak english. When i started Tagalog subreddit was 5k now its like 85k. I met my current girlfriend from learning it.
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u/CarnivalOwl 2d ago
I'm half-Filipino, my fluency in English is better than in Tagalog. Educators would speak English more often than Tagalog, a lot of people here have a lower literacy level in Tagalog.
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u/OnlyInEye 1d ago
Well it has a lot to do with school and no standard system where they still allow local languages for too long. In general two major issues are due to always compromising and picking a language. Do they want filipino or english. In general literature is swallow in the country even at bookstores there is tiny Tagalog section. Too much localized government than a nationalized plan. This is from talking to teachers and visiting 6 plus times. Also corruption.
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u/Moist_Ordinary6457 🇬🇧Native 🇪🇸A2 🇩🇪A1 🇷🇺A1 🇨🇿A1 1d ago
It's so interesting to me that Tagalog is rarely a person's native language. But I suppose it makes sense when there's 180 languages spoken in a country of less than 120 million people
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u/shuranumitu 2d ago edited 2d ago
Not really that obscure, but I'm really into Sahidic Coptic right now, and also trying to get into Kurmanji.
Why? Coptic because I'm interested in ancient near eastern languages and cultures in general, and Coptic is not only the continuation of the language of pharaonic Egypt, but also one of the most important languages of early Christianity and gnosticism.
Kurmanji is the native language of two of my coworkers, and while they do speak good German (and also levantine Arabic), they both have said they feel most comfortable speaking Kurdish, so I'm trying to at least have some basic small talk with them in their language.
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u/SharkHead38 1d ago
Coptic was actually the language that made me think about this post, I was curious if anyone here might actually be studying it!
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u/shuranumitu 1d ago
I'm not yet actually studying it, but I've read through Steindorf's classic "Koptische Grammatik", which was written before the discovery of the Nag Hammadi library and is apparently somewhat antiquated in its treatment of the verbal system, but it does provide a good overview of the basic grammatical structures. I've ordered the much more recent "Coptic in 20 lessons", and I'm excited to start studying it more systematically very soon.
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u/generalkebabi 🇮🇶N - 🇺🇲C2 - 🇫🇷 B1 - 🇷🇺 A1 1d ago
yay to more speakers of Kurdish! I learned Sorani as a kid but forgot some chunk of it and I'm trying to regain my fluency
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u/rondulfr 2d ago
I intend to soon start learning Övdalską / Elfdalian because I've studied Swedish and Old Norse and am very much interested in historical linguistics.
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u/glossyghastly 2d ago
I have to concentrate of Finnish right now because I moved here, but when I get a bit better at that, I want to learn Rusyn, it was grandma's native language but she only taught me a few words
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u/CatsWearingTinyHats 1d ago
I’m learning Irish and now so is my spouse because they were inspired by my progress!
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u/Stoic-outsider 1d ago
I've been learning Fering (North Frisian) on and off ~3000 speakers at most. It's highly threatened. I've been learning it via German.
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u/PiperSlough 1d ago
Are you in the area or learning from a distance? I ask because I'd like to learn Saterland Frisian someday soon but I'm in the U.S. so I'm not sure how feasible it would be.
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u/Stoic-outsider 1d ago
Distance learning using a self-study course etc. You'd need to know German for Saterfriesisch I'm sure.
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u/TitleFun4696 🏴🇪🇸N | 🇵🇹C1 | 🇫🇷B2 | 🇳🇴🇬🇷A2 1d ago
Basque. I'm a half basque immigrant and my family only speaks Spanish or English, so I wanna keep the language going
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u/babeisbusy 1d ago
I’m also hoping to learn basque in the next few years. My papa never taught my dad after leaving the Basque Country but I’ve always loved the sound of it and would love to have conversations with my family there in Basque rather than Spanish or English
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u/tendeuchen Ger, Fr, It, Sp, Ch, Esp, Ukr 1d ago
I started learning Hawaiian when I lived in Hawaii.
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u/sheran13 1d ago
I am already a native speaker of it, but Kurdish. I learnt some when I was little, but because the language of instruction in Turkey is solely Turkish and Kurdish is a big stigma, I speak Turkish better than Kurdish. I'm trying to improve my Kurdish day by day, and I speak it fluently nowadays. It's obscure, because I am one of, if not the only person of my generation in my family who speaks Kurdish.
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u/dunzdeck 2d ago
Catalan for me, which I greatly enjoyed. My current employer offers courses in a lot of languages, so right now there are people doing A1 Maltese or Lithuanian. I don't know them personally though!
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u/dry_lichen 1d ago
Native Catalan speaker here! I'm always curious about people from other places taking an interest in our language :). What made you chose Catalan specifically?
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u/dunzdeck 1d ago
I first found out about the language during a visit to Roselló, and then later I - somewhat unwittingly - went to UPF for my Erasmus. I found the history and political aspects to be just as interesting as the language itself, with its (to me) unusual phonology and superficial similarity to French and Spanish. And now that I have a bug for the region, it's a no brained haha
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u/Heidi739 🇨🇿 Native 🇬🇧 C2 🇩🇪 A2 🇭🇷 A2 2d ago
Is Croatian obscure enough? If you count all the people who speak it or a similar language, I guess it's not, but still, I don't know many other people who study it, and none without any ties to the country (e.g. a spouse or other family). I don't have any ties to the region, but I love it a lot and visit often (actually writing this from Croatia, lol), so I figured it'd be nice to be able to communicate with locals better. I think I understand at strong A2/weak B1 level, but my speaking skills are worse, I'd say more like strong A1/weak A2.
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u/jitterymoogle 2d ago
i'm learning croatian too! but because my mother is croatian and didn't teach me so i'm playing catch up :)
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u/Shqiptar89 1d ago
How come she didn’t teach you?
I’m Albanian from Kosovo and I wish my parents taught me your language. Both of them are fluent but their accent is more on the Serbian side.
I’m trying to learn the language right now but with kids time is an issue.
Anyway good luck!
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u/jitterymoogle 1d ago
my father is American and actually stayed home with me while my mother worked, so it would've been difficult for her to do it i guess
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u/SharkHead38 2d ago
Admittedly I don't mind if Croatian is obscure or not, I just think it's cool that you are learning it :o and for why you're learning it.
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u/pit_supervisor 🇵🇱 N, 🇬🇧 B2+, 🇯🇵 上手 1d ago
Serbo-Croatian is spoken by like half of Balkans, so not obscure at all
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u/Heidi739 🇨🇿 Native 🇬🇧 C2 🇩🇪 A2 🇭🇷 A2 1d ago
As I said in the comment - probably not very obscure to speak it, but it is unusual to learn it without having ties to the region. At least in my experience - all the people I met who weren't native speakers had some family in the region.
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u/Synanceiinae N🇦🇿 C2🇬🇧 C1🇹🇷 B2🇫🇷 B1🇷🇺 B1🇩🇪 A2🇱🇹 2d ago
I don't know if counts but I am learning yiddish.
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u/endurossandwichshop 1d ago
That absolutely counts. I hope to study that someday since my grandparents grew up in Yiddish-speaking households. May I ask what resources you're using?
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u/Synanceiinae N🇦🇿 C2🇬🇧 C1🇹🇷 B2🇫🇷 B1🇷🇺 B1🇩🇪 A2🇱🇹 1d ago edited 1d ago
Unfortunately there is lack of resources for self-learners. After clearing the alphabet, I was looking for something to get started. I found College Yiddish by Uriel Weinreich but it is not beginner friendly. Then while digging YIVO website, I bumped into In eynem: The New Yiddish Textbook which is better suited to beginner learners. You can't go wrong with this one.
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u/deadrummer 🇩🇪 N - 🇬🇧 fluent - 🇲🇫🇫🇮🇯🇵🇪🇸 learning 1d ago edited 1d ago
The most obscure language I learn is Finnish. Because I want to. It's a beautiful language.
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u/juliainfinland 🇩🇪🇬🇧 N | 🇫🇮 C2 | 🇸🇪 C1 | 🇫🇷 B1 | [eo] B1/TL | [vo] TL 1d ago
That's how I got started! Evening classes at community college. I'd signed up for Indonesian, which was canceled because they wouldn't hire an entire teacher for just two students, so I switched to Finnish on a whim.
Then, about one year in, I found out about an exchange program between my own institute (I was studying language technology at a German uni at the time) and the corresponding institute at Helsinki University, so I applied to go there for one year, turns out I was the only applicant because apparently "they speak a language that nobody can learn and also there are only two seasons in Finland, winter and July". (That's what everybody else thought when they saw the word "Helsinki". Me, I thought "Koskenniemi Karlsson Parpola" and I can't for the life of me understand how anyone who's majoring in language technology wouldn't at the very least be thinking "Koskenniemi".)
Then I got kind of stuck here. Now I'm a citizen. *shrug*
As a linguist, I think that Finnish is a very cool language because of its grammar, especially the morphology (I'm a bit of a morphology nerd), and also because of its various strata of loanwords (I used to minor in historical-comparative linguistics).
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u/MisfitMaterial 🇺🇸 🇵🇷 🇫🇷 | 🇧🇷 🇩🇪 🇯🇵 🇨🇳 2d ago
I learned some Old Norse and some Icelandic before needing to stop because of grad school. I hope to return one day!
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u/tollundmansnoose 1d ago
Language: Icelandic.
Reason: I am stuck on this horrible ice rock.
Hilarious: I can understand Faroese pretty good (it's Icelandic, but drunk!). Icelanders can't. This was explained to me as that I as a second language learner listen for meaning rather than declensions.
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u/sraskogr English N | español C1 | português B2 | 日本語 N5 1d ago
I took classes to learn Judaeo-Spanish (Ladino) for about 6 months but had to drop them because life got in the way.
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u/endurossandwichshop 1d ago
I love this. What got you interested in it?
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u/sraskogr English N | español C1 | português B2 | 日本語 N5 1d ago
So, I already speak Spanish and I became interested in Jewish culture and languages - particularly Hebrew, Yiddish, and Judaeo-Spanish - many years ago mainly through music. I stumbled across an advertisement for a programme run by Oxford University that offered free lessons in Yiddish, Ladino, Haketia, and other more obscure Jewish languages. I signed up for Yiddish and Ladino classes but only ended up being accepted into the Ladino ones. It was really interesting, it's a shame I wasn't able to finish the course.
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u/TheOnePhoedic 🇵🇱🇬🇧🇹🇷🇰🇿🇷🇸🇷🇺 2d ago
I'm learning Kazakh. It could have been counted as obscure 5 years ago, now it's somewhat trendy
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u/Moist_Ordinary6457 🇬🇧Native 🇪🇸A2 🇩🇪A1 🇷🇺A1 🇨🇿A1 1d ago
It's not that obscure but I've studied Czech on and off. No one outside of Czechia speaks it but it's quite pretty
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u/LongDrink9410 1d ago
I wouldn't say no one outside of Czechia speaks it, there's quite a few speakers in Chicago & its suburbs as well as Texas (Czexans!). This is coming from a czech american lol
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u/dry_lichen 1d ago
Not the most obscure language out there, but Occitan. Mostly because it's the closest language to my own (Catalan), and to show some appreciation for the Aran Valley
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u/Oculi_Glauci N 🇺🇸 ∣ 🇮🇹 🇷🇺 🇨🇳 1d ago
I’ve learned some Lakhotiyapi, the language of the indigenous Lakota people in the US. I grew up near the plains region and always thought indigenous languages were super interesting. They seriously need more recognition and preservation. Most white Americans know nothing about them.
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u/SergeiAndropov 1d ago
I'm currently learning Hindi, but at some point in the future I really want to study an indigenous language. I was going to learn the one spoken where I live, but it turns out that we only have a single word list from it, so I'll probably do one of the neighboring languages.
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u/frostochfeber Fluent: 🇳🇱🇬🇧 | B1: 🇸🇪 | A2: 🇰🇷 | A1:🇯🇵🇫🇴 2d ago
I'm (very slowly) self-learning Faroese. Just because I absolutely love the sound of it.
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u/Nowordsofitsown N:🇩🇪 L:🇬🇧🇳🇴🇫🇷🇮🇹🇫🇴🇮🇸 2d ago
Hello, fellow Faroese fan!
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u/frostochfeber Fluent: 🇳🇱🇬🇧 | B1: 🇸🇪 | A2: 🇰🇷 | A1:🇯🇵🇫🇴 2d ago
Hahaha hello!
*meme of spiderman pointing at spiderman
I saw your comment. Which European universities offer Faroese? I was only aware of the courses offered locally. Do you still use the language often?
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u/Nowordsofitsown N:🇩🇪 L:🇬🇧🇳🇴🇫🇷🇮🇹🇫🇴🇮🇸 2d ago
Greifswald did and probably still does, but it is not a learn to speak language course. It's for students of Scandinavian studies, is based on previous knowledge of a Scandinavian language, Norse and Icelandic and looks at Faroese from a linguistic point of view. Same thing in Oslo, but afaik that seminar was a one time thing.
My only contact with Faroese these days is r/Faroese.
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u/AdZealousideal9914 🇳🇱 native|🇫🇷|🇬🇧|🇸🇪|(🇫🇮) 1d ago
I'm learning Gothic and Finnish right now. Finnish isn't that obscure, but I suppose Gothic is? I started learning Gothic mainly out of a general interest in the history of the Germanic languages, but I got fascinated by the Gothic language and I stuck with it.
I also would love to learn Lule Sámi and move to Jokkmokk one day. I know you can get by with Swedish (or even English), but as someone who likes to learn languages, I feel it would be a form of disrespect not to try to learn Lule Sámi. Unfortunately, there are many more resources for Northern Sámi, but not so many for Lule Sámi.
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u/jackymanifests N 🇳🇱 C1 🇬🇧 B1 🇧🇪 A1 🇸🇮 A1 🇯🇵 1d ago
I don't know if it is considered obscure, but I am learning Slovene. Why? Because I fell in live with the country 2 years ago and I eventually want to live there. So learning the language is quite important for me.
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u/PiperSlough 1d ago
I started learning Pennsylvania Dutch out of curiosity, with no real plans to get into it beyond a few phrases. My maternal grandparents both had PA Dutch ancestry (significant amounts for my Gramps), and I started getting interested in small languages during the pandemic and figured I might as well check it out.
I never actually expected to start learning it. I was very uninterested in German languages at that point. But the more I learned about the history, the more interested I got, and the next thing I knew I was taking online classes and collecting everything Masthof and the Pennsylvania German Society printed that I could get my hands on. I love it so much. It's completely won me over! I'm not very good at it yet but I'm improving every day.
It's also changed my mind about Germanic languages. I took a brief break to dabble in a few others for a couple months before going back to PAD. Once I have a bit of a better grasp on it, I want to try and learn a little Saterland Frisian. (Though she had a few PA Dutch ancestors, most of my Gram's German family were much more recent immigrants from the Cloppenburg area. I've no idea if any of them spoke Saterland Frisian - the Low German dialect spoken in the area is more likely - but I've been interested in Frisian languages for a while and I've become fascinated with efforts to preserve the Saterland dialect.)
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u/juliainfinland 🇩🇪🇬🇧 N | 🇫🇮 C2 | 🇸🇪 C1 | 🇫🇷 B1 | [eo] B1/TL | [vo] TL 1d ago
I'm from Saarland, Germany, and PD is actually pretty close to the Saarlandian dialect group (my heritage language). I sort of understand PD if you speak slowly and I can read it almost fluently. I've learned to deal with "weird" words such as gleiche.
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u/EducationalFee3 1d ago
Taishanese - a related language to standard Cantonese but not very mutually intelligible. Taishanese itself has many accents and variations.
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u/Rachel_235 🇷🇺 (N), 🇺🇸 (C2), 🇸🇦 (B2), 🇧🇾 (B1), 🇩🇪 (A1) 1d ago
Chechen, no clear reason outside of wanting to learn SOME language
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u/Motor_Ad8471 1d ago
Lithuanian very interesting origin of the language and just want to challenge myself!
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u/ayelijah4 🇺🇸N, 🇫🇷A2, 🇪🇬A1, 🇪🇸A1, 🇦🇲A0, Assyrian A0 1d ago
i thought Armenian and Assyrian were obscure but wow i learned some new languages from this thread!
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u/Longjumping-Hat-1210 1d ago
WTF? SERIOUSLY?
I LEARNT THOSE EXACT TWO AS A KID :O
I'm Assyrian from Syria, I learnt some basic Assyrian (mainly for liturgical purposes) and I went to an Armenian speaking school (All of the good Assyrian private schools were bombed so I had to move) and learnt some Armenian briefly before moving to Europe... I forgot both, all I can do is write in Garshuni (Arabic written using Syriac letters)
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u/juliainfinland 🇩🇪🇬🇧 N | 🇫🇮 C2 | 🇸🇪 C1 | 🇫🇷 B1 | [eo] B1/TL | [vo] TL 1d ago
I'm kinda sorta learning Luxembourgish (meaning that I read Wikipedia articles and listen to the radio). My native language is German; Saarlandian (the dialect group that's physically closest to Luxembourg) is my heritage language; I took many years of French at school and I know basic Dutch, so I can guess non-German words I don't know.
I'm also eyeing Volapük, but that's one of those "if I ever have the time" projects. There are very few resources out there to begin with.
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u/AceKittyhawk 1d ago
I will win this one, but I cannot tell you the language because it will completely doxx the person. My ex-boyfriend wrote a thesis and a book about a language that had only five remaining speakers at the time and he had to learn it significantly to be able to do so. Most of the speakers were very old and remote so it might very well have a couple left.
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u/EmergencyFox3583 1d ago
So, is he aiming to improve it up to the native like level, in order to keep it from disappearing entirely? 😉
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u/AceKittyhawk 1d ago
I’m sorry that was never a realistic possibility. There was only one speaker that was under their 80s and he did not spend his life living there. This all happens over 25 years ago. Any language that has such numbers is not going to survive. I’m sorry. He did live with them for a while so he learned it enough, but you’re not gonna be a near native speaker of such a language or use it much unless you live there and most people wouldn’t spend their lives with two other people. Many languages die even if you go down to hundreds or thousands it’s not very likely to go on.
He did record it and documented linguistic structure as well as aspects of the culture that relate to linguistic structure at least. A lot of languages don’t get that.
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u/EmergencyFox3583 1d ago
Oh, I was just being a bit silly, sorry about that. Indeed, "language death" is a recognised term in linguistics (unfortunately 🥴). He did what could be done in this kind of situation — much respect and best regards from a fellow linguist. ❤️
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u/jamesleecoleman 1d ago
Tigrinya.
Met a woman that I'm attracted to. I wanted to learn more about the culture and use the language with her. It was a journey to just tell her happy birthday in Tigrinya but totally worth it :)
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u/schrodingers_cat27 1d ago
Do Quenya and Sindarin count? I don't think they're that obscure.
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u/SurveyComfortable825 1d ago
They definitely count, I believe, since I have never heard of any of them.
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u/SabenaDeVis 1d ago
Having made the Baltics, specifically Estonia, my second home and having long obtained my C1 in Estonian, this led to passionate love affairs with the distantly related, yet elusive, severely endangered and almost otherworldly sounding Saami tongues on the one hand; and the neighbouring, yet no less alien and intriguing, Lithuanian and Latvian on the other.
When in actual practice one hears more Russian in the streets of Tallinn than the indigenous tongue and with infinite learning resources out there, you'd think one would make that their priority Slavic language and reach fluency with relative ease - if it weren't for the far more obscure Belarusian being more appealing phonologically, orthographically, and overall a more rewarding commitment and community, given how even its own government blatantly favours and promotes Russian instead.
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u/Silly-Snow1277 🇩🇪 N| 🇬🇧C2 | 🇪🇸🇸🇪B2 | 🇫🇷 A2 1d ago edited 1d ago
Most "obscure" language I probably tried so far (except for fictional ones like Sindarin or Valyrian) is Gaeilge.
I'd also love continuing my Gaeilge journey, but currently I've got to much other stuff on my plate.
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u/igorrto2 🇷🇺(N),🇬🇧(C1),🇯🇵(B2),🇨🇳(A2),🇬🇷(A1),🇰🇷🇲🇰(below A1) 1d ago
Macedonian. I’m learning it because I frequently live in northern Greece where lots of Macedonians spend their weekends. There is no subreddit for it (except for a very small r/LearnMacedonian) and not even a YouTube video about it. Everyone’s learning Serbian and Bulgarian but wheres my Macedonian gang at?
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u/MNswede06 🇺🇸N | 🇸🇪🇫🇷B2 | 🇷🇺🇪🇸A2 | 🇻🇳 A1+ 1d ago
Personally: I'm currently learning Vietnamese ahead of a mission trip (charitable, not religious) next year. Not necessarily an obscure language but unusual for westerners to learn unless they're living there or perhaps marrying into a family.
Someone else: I had an Air Force friend a while back who was studying Twi at Defense Language Institute in Monterey.
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u/Longjumping-Hat-1210 1d ago
I'm learning multiple languages right now but the most obscure one (at least to the general public) is Esperanto
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u/yungScooter30 🇺🇸🇮🇹 1d ago
When I started going to university in the US, a student in my linguistics cohort was learning Romansh and would not stop bragging about how quirky he was and he took pride in the fact that we 18 year olds had not heard of it until that point.
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u/Circular_Time 🇬🇧 1d ago
I'm learning Hungarian. It's not "obscure" compared to some others, but it definitely seems to be one of the less commonly studied languages (at least in my neck of the woods).
I started learning it because someone bet me that I wouldn't, lol. It was on my list of languages that I want to learn anyway (and I've had a couple books for it waiting on my language shelf for a few years now), so the bet/dare was the little push that I needed.
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u/Maree_Pie 16h ago
Very cool! I'm very lightly dabbling in Hungarian, mostly as a legacy language. My paternal grandparents and great-grandparents were born in the old country. The grammar is wild
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u/Circular_Time 🇬🇧 11h ago
Nice. I have no family or cultural connections to the language or country, but Hungarian sounds beautiful to me.
I'm one of the strange people that actually like studying grammar, so that's one of my other reasons for learning it.
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u/JulieSongwriter 19h ago
We live in Western New York where there are populations of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Nation. Onöndowaʼga꞉ʼ Gawë꞉no, is the language of the Seneca people, one of the Six Nations of the Iroquois League. Fewer than 100 people still speak the language. It's a very slow process, like planting a forest, but there are a few elders who are teaching the language to our children.
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u/Alexthe_bug 16h ago
Acadian Chiac.
It is technically a dialect of French spoken in the maritime provinces of Canada.
My family is not Acadian but I grew up with the French immersion program in New Brunswick where a lot of my teachers were Acadian. In youth groups outside of school, a lot of my friends were Acadian. I have been told many times that I sound far more Chiac than the typical immersion speaker and I think it is because of how much I practiced French outside of school and Québec tv.
A lot of people think Chiac it's just a combination of the English language and the French language. However, that's wrong. It is a dialect of french that incorporates a lot of an english words. There are some words that a Chiac speaker would never say in English. And there are some things that a Chiac speaker will always use the english term for. There is also a lot of specific slang that you will only hear in some Acadian communities of the maritimes.
I love speaking the Chiac dialect of French, even though my ancestry isn't Acadian, because it says a lot about where I grew up. Also, it's kind of like having a secret language whenever I'm outside of the maritimes, cause no one else understands all of what I'm saying to other Chiac speakers.
Technically not a language, but I love learning more Chiac, every day.
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u/Brilliant-Web-3370 2d ago
Dated a girl from a tiny island once and tried to learn her local dialect, lasted about two weeks before I gave up and just used English.
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u/shuranumitu 2d ago
Well, what was the language? Why would you leave out the most interesting part 😅
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u/SurveyComfortable825 1d ago
Seems like you didnt even bother to learn the name of the language though🤣🤣
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u/Different_Method_191 1d ago
Livonian, Mirandese, Votic, Wymysorys, Ter Sámi, Guernesiais, Jèrriais, Tehuelche, Tanema, Kawésqar
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u/Pretend_Category_519 1d ago
I started to learn Old English for a wrestling gimmick which was basically just ripping off Bray Wyatt.
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u/Ok_Writing_3497 1d ago
Basque - not that obscure but you’d be surprised how many people have never heard of it
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u/Aakharin-ejdehaa Fluent: 🇷🇺🦁🇮🇷🇮🇱🇺🇸, learning: 🇩🇪 1d ago
Persian. Not obscure but also not exactly a popular language to learn...
Why? Just because I liked it, I liked the culture, the history, the poetry, the music, the food, the temperament of the people and also everyone who speaks it were super nice and very helpful towards me. It's also a useful language in order to learn other skills because it has a lot of content for natives on social media and the lack of copyright rights in it is just amazing! I often use Persian (alongside Russian) to find and download resources in German for free, and since I read quite a lot I think I have saved more than 400€ (Euro) so far, simply by knowing Persian and Russian.
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u/G0PACKER5 1d ago
I knew a guy like 15 years ago trying to learn some super remote languages of tribal people. He was unbelievably religious and thought it was his calling to translate the Bible into the languages to make sure no one missed out on hearing the "good news"
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u/Pale-Border-7122 1d ago
Quechua. I asked my girlfriend to buy me a textbook for an unusual language for me and she picked this. It does go against the usual advice of how to pick a language but I wanted to try something I wouldn't have thought of and do something different. It's quite hard to find taught courses online unless you already speak Spanish, which I do not, and found an interesting experience. I did quite like it, and since then I have optimised my learning process so I might pick it up again as a side language.
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u/SamePhotograph2 🇺🇲N - 🇫🇷B1 - 🇪🇸A2 1d ago
I studied Greenlandic for a while. Ran into a severe roadblock though, in that most Kalaallisut material is in Danish and I don't speak Danish
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u/Helpful_Supermarket7 1d ago
I love ancient and/or rare languages and I've learned a few that are pretty obscure to most people.
- Yiddish : not ancient but I'm decent at German and love learning new writing systems. It's not very hard once you get the hang of the writing.
- Sabaic : also called Old South Arabian, it was spoken in today's Western Yemen from the 8th century BC to the birth of Islam. The writing system is very unique, close to Ethiopian ge'ez which came from it. I had the opportunity to study it at university and I took the class for fun, it was great ! Not as hard as other Semitic languages I've tried (looking at you Arabic).
- Phoenician : the ancestor to most writing systems today, it's super interesting and branches into many variants in writing systems (notably Aramaic and Punic Phoenician). It's quite tough but the history is very interesting.
- Manchu : one of my favourites. I love the history of Qing dynasty China and Manchu was a big part of it in the 17th and 18th century. The writing system is adapted from Mongolian, which comes from Uyghur, Syriac and Aramaic (all the way to Phoenician). It's a linked letter writing system somewhat similar to Arabic but written vertically which is very unique. They also had the decency to write all the vowels which makes it quite easy to decipher unlike other languages (looking at you Mongolian). I'm taking the same Manchu class this year and I'm very excited although it's gonna be the same thing I already did (I just do it for fun)
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u/Big-Helicopter3358 Italian N | English B2+ French B1 Russian A2 Persian A1 21h ago
Edo, a language spoken in the state of Benin, Nigeria, where the family of my mom comes from.
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u/katnip_fl 18h ago
My 8 year old grandson is going to an international school in Abu Dhabi so is learning Arabic. He already speaks English and Dutch.
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u/ipini 🇨🇦 learning 🇫🇷 (B1) 2d ago
I’m learning French and every now and then for fun I work on Haitian Creole.
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u/ProduceAcceptable724 🇬🇧N 🇷🇴A2 1d ago
Romanian, I wouldn’t say it’s obscure. Although I am a bit bias since I live here.
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u/katasaga New member 1d ago
A polyglot friend who decided to learn Basque even tho being never visited the region
I think it would be interesting to learn Frisian since it's a subculture within the Netherlands
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u/PrncessVespa 1d ago
Once I get to a decent conversational level in Spanish (I'm not super far off) I plan to learn Catalan, as my husband and I are about to be in the process of moving closer to his family out in Catalunya
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u/langisii 🇦🇺N 🇹🇴A2 🇰🇷A1 1d ago
I'm learning Tongan because it's my heritage language (which I wasn't raised with) and I want to be able to properly speak with my family and read & write in it.
There are more obscure Polynesian languages I'd love to learn, like Niuafoʻou and Rapa Nui. I'd love to learn Māori too. If I knew those few I feel like I could probably understand at least like 80% of any other Polynesian language, the dream
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u/fiona_anne_216 1d ago
I started learning Welsh but hit a wall. Because Duolingo sucks and I had no other resource. I’d love to learn an indigenous American language, especially New England based. But how…
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u/estrozen 1d ago
i guess a lot of languages are "obscure" where i am, people only learn Spanish and maybee French (both for classes prob), but i'm learning Croatian.
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1d ago
Tshangla. Common in east Bhutan. Dhongkha is the national language but I'm interested in east
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u/SnooLemons6942 1d ago
Starting on some french creole languages in the carribean cause I wanna work over there
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u/Fragdoll62 1d ago
I learned Oji-Cree growing up in a northern Ontario community (about 15’000 speakers total). I worked at the local hospital as a teenager and some of the elders that spent their whole lives on the reservations didn’t speak English, so it was very useful. I’m Dutch and Scottish, red haired and white as a ghost, so it always tickled the kokums and shomish’s that they could hear their language come from my mouth! I now live in the Netherlands for the last 10 years so I am very rusty, but I can still understand and speak at a basic level.
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u/Gr8_Chicken_Man 1d ago
Im going to start to learn Mayan. In Merida where I live there is a large population that still speaks Mayan.
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u/ididntwantodothis- 1d ago
Uzbek as a lebanese LOLL, idk Uzbek is a very beautiful country and I would like to visit it. Also the app I'm learning from is AI free. Originally I wanted to learn Chinese but some Uzbek never hurt anyone!
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u/Commando_67 1d ago
I'm learning Finnish. Why? The short answer is I felt like it. That's true but the reason I stuck with it was it was hard, but very logical, so it's almost like solving a puzzle. Most languages have tons of exceptions and things that "you just do it that way". Finnish is really, really complicated, but you can usually assume once something is true, it stays true.
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u/Ok_Sky_1907 1d ago
Nalik (4,000 speakers as of latest census). Indigenous north eastern papua new guinean language spoken in ~17 villages on the island of new ireland. I’m a descendant of the one of the last 8 nalik leaders (8 clans with their own individual leaders).
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u/Brave_Dark_4050 1d ago
i learned a bit of manx after stumbling into a rabbit hole about its revival, then spent weeks knowing how to say “the cat” and basically nothing else lol
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u/baritone0645 1d ago
At one point, I was learning the Micronesian language of Pohnpeian. I’d love to start again but I’ve moved away from my friends and the resources online are not plentiful
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u/shemusthaveroses 🇮🇪 (B1/B2 ish) 1d ago
Gaelainn feels obscure to most folks I mention it to. For me my reason is ancestral, the fact that it’s my heritage and what my family is proud of, and the fact that I’m a nerd and helping preserve a minoritized, endangered language is cool as hell
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u/MasterpieceOwn4402 N🇯🇵🇬🇧|A2🇪🇸|learning🇰🇷 1d ago
I'm learning dzongkha and tibetan bc ngl their script eats, and shanghainese bc I heard the tone system is simpler than mandarin or cantonese
anw tibetan writing is 10/10 the coolest script I've seen
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u/Ewit_ N🇭🇺 | A1🇩🇪 | L 🇫🇮 and Mansi 1d ago
I'm learning Mansi, specifically Northern Mansi, (900-2000 speakers) because I wanted to see how easy it would be for me but fell in love with the language and want to help it. I've been trying to make it more easly available online since 4 and a half years now.
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u/SpecificDry6723 1d ago
not that obscure but I just started learning Bulgarian, I can read Cyrillic for a long time and now that I have some free time, I will try to use that ability
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u/Remarkable_Bread_864 🇬🇧 C2, Brezhoneg A2+, 🏴 A1 17h ago
I'm learning Breton (brezhoneg), despite not being from France and speaking rather crappy French, because I'm fascinated with the local culture. It's an endangered Celtic language, and it would be a great shame to see it die while I'm still alive.
Hep brezhoneg Breizh ebet. Without Breton there is no Brittany. (Yes, there is also gallo, but that's not my area of interest.)
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u/Ill_Presentation3817 16h ago
I want to learn Tok Pisin because it's similar to English and I love Papua New Guinea but damn are there few resources.
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u/A380_Flyer 16h ago
I want to learn a OVS language (Apples eat you) but it’s hard to find learning materials online.
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u/Kannydennedy 2d ago
Kunwinjku (~2000 speakers). I learnt it because I was working at the art centre in Arnhem Land where it’s spoken, and I’ve been helping with the dictionary now for 10 years.