Replace all the languages you are learning with ones that have less than 2 million speakers

[nooj]

Also none of the hipsters that I'm around (and I'm around a lot of them...sadly) are doing anything special surrounding learning other languages. In fact the only people I hear talking about linguistic imperialism are people who are directly affected by it and linguists (and "budding linguists", but even then not much). I suspect a handful of other academics do as well but given that most hipsters are generally of a specific generation you're not going to find many who have a strong foothold into the ivory tower.

You got me, I'm finishing off my Masters in linguistics XP. I do hear it from people in my department, I guess because my university has traditionally been focused on descriptive fieldwork, but it's probably safe to say that for a lot of people involved in linguistics, they think of it in the same way as a marine biologist thinks about global warming. They might be personally interested, but they might also have purely professional interest in being concerned about global warming: if global warming destroys coral reefs, what the heck do I study now!

Also, what the heck, why are there so many Australians here? We are definitely overrepresented.

But I'm a New Zealand citizen as well. Maori is one of my favourite languages just to listen to, so I would definitely pick Maori for my next one. When I grew up, my best friend was Maori, but like a lot of children of his generation, he was not raised speaking it as his primary language. You know they released a Maori dub of Moana recently, with many of the same actors coming to reprise the role? I've been listening to the soundtrack for the last couple of weeks and it's gorgeous. Here's one song, Waiata O Te Kainga.

[basica]

That actually would be more fun for me.

Constraining the choice of language to study by size of speech community (Why 2 million anyway? How about 200,000? 20?) is not as fun for someone who likes foreign languages, and wants to let interests guide the decision rather than some figure plucked out of thin air.

If I want to play along then, may I ask which language(s) anyone would like to learn among the languages that have just three numerals (i.e. singular, dual, plural)?

As you pointed out, it's a constraint pulled out of thin air and that's what makes it fun. You could just as easily say "If you had to choose an Indian language, which would you pick?" or "If you had to learn a language that used a lot of cases, which one would you choose?" It's the randomness that's enjoyable, especially for someone interested in learning languages for the enjoyment of it.

In your situation, since you said you have particular interests that guide you, any form of this question would be unsuitable unless it was "what languages would you learn if you had all the time and resources in the world". Any question based on a restraint it appears you would resent which is fine, it's obviously not for you. All in all, it's a bit of fun for others, and not for you and that's ok.

As for your question, I'd of course go with Piraha

[Chung]

That actually would be more fun for me.

Constraining the choice of language to study by size of speech community (Why 2 million anyway? How about 200,000? 20?) is not as fun for someone who likes foreign languages, and wants to let interests guide the decision rather than some figure plucked out of thin air.

If I want to play along then, may I ask which language(s) anyone would like to learn among the languages that have just three numerals (i.e. singular, dual, plural)?

As you pointed out, it's a constraint pulled out of thin air and that's what makes it fun. You could just as easily say "If you had to choose an Indian language, which would you pick?" or "If you had to learn a language that used a lot of cases, which one would you choose?" It's the randomness that's enjoyable, especially for someone interested in learning languages for the enjoyment of it.

In your situation, since you said you have particular interests that guide you, any form of this question would be unsuitable unless it was "what languages would you learn if you had all the time and resources in the world". Any question based on a restraint it appears you would resent which is fine, it's obviously not for you. All in all, it's a bit of fun for others, and not for you and that's ok.

As for your question, I'd of course go with Piraha

That's not quite true. As someone who's big on Uralic languages, I could ask which Uralic language would someone want to learn out of the blue. Arbitrary thought experiment, right? Fun for me, but I'd bore or perhaps even mildly annoy a lot of people (even on this forum) with that kind of question (especially if I've previously championed Uralic languages gratuitously or vocally decried how several of them are now endangered). I'd have to lay off the Uralic sauce, so to speak. Even though I'm among people who are into languages more than the average person, a lot of us here learn those languages (or the associated cultures) that interest us. In real life, I wouldn't envy most people if they were hearing me out about the intricacies of the Finnish direct object, in/definite conjugations in Mordvin and Hungarian, consonant gradation in Inari Saami or Turkic loanwords in Meadow Mari. I can't see how, say, emk could do more than smile and nod as I prattle on about such things, when he's actually thinking that I'm eating into his time from working on a new software tool or reading another BD.

I'd stick with Northern Saami, if only so that I can complete the last volume of Davvin on my shelf.

[basica]

As for your question about Uralic languages, even that would be interesting me. I have no interest in learning a minority language and likely never will but I still enjoy it. These type of never will happen hyptotheticals are still enjoyable. I don't understand how some people can get annoyed or not enjoy them, but hey we're all different and I don't need to understand.

That said, I believe I've derailed this conversation enough, so maybe we can continue via PM if we wish to continue down this path.

[nooj]

This is just a thought experiment and I thought the 2 million restriction would just provide a bit of structure.

But I'll be honest, I don't care if you choose a dead language like some people have already, or a language that has something like 10 million speakers.

It is an arbitrary limit. I just didn't want it to become a thread where everyone chooses Dutch, which don't get me wrong, is one of my favourite languages.

It does make me wonder, if you yourself were a billionaire, do you think that would change your learning habits? Would you keep learning the languages you're learning?

[smallwhite]

Thanks reineke for the link. I've lived in New Zealand and Australia and I like both countries, so I pick Maori (NZ) and one Australian aboriginal language.

[aokoye]

Thanks for the explanation earlier - that makes your hipster commentary make more sense.

As tarvos asked earlier, "Why"?

I guess I'm a bit more playful than you two. When I was a kid we would ask outrageous questions like this for fun (one in particular that we often went to: would you rather be deaf or blind?). Obviously you guys don't think it to be so fun

That actually would be more fun for me.

Constraining the choice of language to study by size of speech community (Why 2 million anyway? How about 20 million? 200,000? 20?) is not as fun for someone who likes foreign languages, and wants to let interests guide the decision rather than some figure plucked out of thin air.

If I want to play along then, may I ask which language(s) anyone would like to learn among the languages that have just three grammatical numbers (i.e. singular, dual, plural)?

Amusingly I just did the, "how would well would I cope if I was blind vs if I was deaf" thing yesterday with one of the friends I was referring to earlier, who is very proficient in ASL. I think, Chung, that for you and perhaps a handful of other people limiting your choice of languages by size of speakers isn't fun, but it's clear that there are others who find the thought experiment enjoyable (all of whom enjoy studying language even! ).

As for the grammatical number restriction - probably Biblical Hebrew, mainly because it's useful to me and I have resources to do so (I say looking guiltily at my bookshelf...)

[Adrianslont]

If I were to learn a minority language, I’d go for Javanese or Sundanese but they have approximately 94 million and 42 million speakers respectively.

I like the idea of lots of bang for my buck and they are spoken in a part of the world I am interested in.

[Ogrim]

Also, this is not a thread necessarily about endangered languages. A language doesn't have to have more than 2 million speakers to be healthy. A language can have 100 speakers and be far more healthier than one than has 6-8 million native speakers (like Quechua).

Thanks for that clarification. Personally I did not see anything provocative in your question, but to condition it on an arbitrary number of speakers made me, and others it seems, to understand it as a question about minority/regional/endangered langauges. To me a more interesting question would be why there are some languages "nobody" seems to study. I may be wrong, but in all my years at HTLAL and LLorg I cannot remember anyone seriously studying e.g. Armenian, which has some eight million speakers scattered around the world. Or what about Guaraní, an official language of Paraguay and the native language of more than six million people? I guess if I were to give up on Arabic and Russian for five years I'd pick one or both of these.

[Saim]

Lots of people have been using the expressions minority language and endangered language in this thread. I'd just like to point out that having less than two million speakers doesn't necessarily mean that a given language is endangered or minoritised, nor does having more than 2 million or even tens of millions of speakers guarantee not being endangered. Compare the sociolinguistic situation of Maltese (~500k), Luxembourgish (~400k), Icelandic (~400k) or Estonian (~1 million) with that of Tamazight (~2.5 million), Kurmanji (~15 million), Pakistani Punjabi (~80 million in Pakistan, over 100 worldwide), Javanese (~90 million) or Shanghainese (~15 million).

That being said, yes, I've rarely seen or met in person many Aboriginal people.

I'm from the Sunshine Coast and I had the same experience. Most immigrants were from the UK or New Zealand; I probably knew more British Asians than Aborigines to be honest.

In the 2016 Census there were 650, 000 people who identified as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islanders, whereas 142, 000 people marked Maori ancestry. Now it may seem like there are many more Aborigines, but that doesn't necessarily mean settler Australians are going to be in contact with them - Aboriginal settlement is most concentrated in the Northern Territory and Northern Queensland, whereas Maoris are spread out throughout the urban and suburban areas (showing a similar pattern of settlement to European New Zealanders) where most of the population lives.