Underrated Languages

[basica]

I know the polyglot laoshu (not sure if he's a member here?) has learnt Ethiopian and Somali (along with Swahili too I believe)

Do you mean Amharic, which seems to be a "language of inter-ethnic communication" in Ethiopia? Amharic had some appeal for reggae artists, some of whom would employ a phrase or two in their lyrics. BTW, I really whish I knew Ge'ez, the classical language of Ethiopia.

I probably do mean that. I have to admit I know essentially nothing about Ethiopia. I had a quick look but I can't seem to find the video where he talks about it (and I'm too lazy to search longer). I just recall it was Ethiopian.

[basica]

I thought I was being misunderstood, but it seems I wasn’t, my apologies, I simply misunderstood you.

Ain't that the worst? All good, I took no offense. We're just having a conversation here and things can easily be misinterpreted when we're just relying on our words to convey information that would normally be expressed through tone and body language and so on.

I do feel sometimes that what has potentially ‘captured me’ with French is the subtle sell of the beautiful landscapes, and alluring culture and history, small villages, and smooth sounding language. It roped me in, and I think it does that for many people. I knew what was happening, we know when we like something, but tourism in many forms lures people in, and for me, with the language I wanted to be in the picture with the French people, part of them, not viewing it from the outside like a tourist.

I hear about how great Norway is and I want to get into that culture too, from the inside. In learning any language I want to become a part of its culture, its people, its land and life, as one of the natives. I imagine life there, integrating and mingling, living like they do, with the rose-coloured glasses off experiencing the upps and downs, positives and negatives that comes with the people, culture and land behind and within their language, which is why I avoid English in places I can manage in their language. I can speak English at home in Australia as its part of my culture, in France I want to be French, in Norway, Norwegian, in Romania, Romanian. However I can’t live everywhere with my family (or alone), and I must consider my family and aim for a society that has at least a decent quality of life. Sometimes countries with higher standards of living cast a spell over me. Mind you, as a nurse I’d do much better in Luxembourg than Norway, and it does appeal to me, yet Norway has that wild nature that Luxembourg doesn’t. However Luxembourg = 3 main languages, and one to two decent sized immigrant languages, and is very appealing too... I’m dribbling and I’m not sure I’ve gone anywhere near answering your question.

I think we all do this to a degree. I often imagine myself wearing opanci and a šajkača at a kafana drinking turkish coffee and having a game of chess while in the Balkans This is despite the fact I'll likely stay in Australia unless I became richer than my wildest dreams

[Sarafina]

It's a shame that nobody seems interested in learning Nigerian languages in particular Yoruba (I'm slightly biased in wanting people in learn Yoruba as my parents are native speakers of the language). There are approximately 28 million people that speak Yoruba yet I've never seen anyone even take an interest in wanting to learn it on many language learning forum.

If you look of non-African descent, Nigerian people will be automatically so impressed and flattered that someone is actually interested in their culture enough to want to learn one of their major indigenous languages (as even some Nigerians don't even value their native language enough to pass it to their children). Look at the YouTube comments of whenever a white people learns Yoruba, it's overwhelmingly positive.

In countries like U.K and America, there is a significant Nigerian population so there are plenty of opportunities to practice. Yoruba employs a Latin alphabet. Nigeria is not without its problems and issues which would require significant thought of weighing the pros and cons of wanting to relocate there. But in terms of short-term travel, depending on where you stay, it's no more dangerous than Brazil. But then you don't need to have a desire to move there in order to learn a language.

It has a beautiful oral history.

Here are some examples of some Yoruba sayings (translated)
"Birds don't speak ill of each other as the sky is wide enough for all the birds to fly without collision."
"The sky is falling is not the problem of one person."
"When trouble knocks and one says there is no chair it says it bring it own seat."
"No need telling the blind that the market is deserted, when he does not hear the voices of the market he will turn back."

[basica]

It's a shame that nobody seems interested in learning Nigerian languages in particular Yoruba (I'm slightly biased in wanting people in learn Yoruba as my parents are native speakers of the language).

Slightly off topic, but did you grow up speaking the language? Or, did you learn it later on? If the latter, how would you rate the difficulty of learning it? I grew up with a Nigerian family next door and I'm a bit tempted now to learn a few phrases in time for my next visit back home to see the look on their faces Might learn a bit more than that depending on the difficulty.

EDIT: Assuming they speak Yoruba..that would be awkward as hell if they didn't. Gotta find out in a subtle way..

[nooj]

I think Hausa sounds fab-u-lous. I really like Shona. Malgasy is also a really cool language, although it is Austronesian. I really want to learn Wolof. When I was living in Madrid, my neighbourhood had a huge concentration of Senegalese immigrants, so I really enjoyed going to the local Senegalese restaurant and listening to Wolof.

One of my dreams at a certain point was to go study at SOAS, because it has an amazing Oriental and African department. Their language departments are top notch.

There's a YT channel that some SOAS students run, on which I must have spent hours just listening. They have samples of all the languages that students and stuff speak, they present themselves and say a bit of what they're studying or working on. It's called SOAS We Talk.

Here is Tigrinya (you can really hear it's Semiticness!):



Australia is gifted in that it has so many immigrants from other countries. All we have to do is just talk to our literal neighbours! The trouble is that time is limited. How can we learn Greek, then Vietnamese, then Lebanese Arabic, then Tamil, then Cantonese?

[Sarafina]

It's a shame that nobody seems interested in learning Nigerian languages in particular Yoruba (I'm slightly biased in wanting people in learn Yoruba as my parents are native speakers of the language).

Slightly off topic, but did you grow up speaking the language? Or, did you learn it later on? If the latter, how would you rate the difficulty of learning it? I grew up with a Nigerian family next door and I'm a bit tempted now to learn a few phrases in time for my next visit back home to see the look on their faces Might learn a bit more than that depending on the difficulty.

EDIT: Assuming they speak Yoruba..that would be awkward as hell if they didn't. Gotta find out in a subtle way..

You could just ask them what other languages apart from English do they know and say that you're doing a survey on the linguistic diversity in your neighbourhood. I grew up hearing the language so I can understand 95-100% of Yoruba.

However speaking is a different story. I always compare it to a one way tunnel (i.e the ease of translating from Yoruba to English) however if I try to reserve and turn around then that's when trouble and awkwardness occurs. So it's hard to say how difficult it is.

I don't think that's that difficult for a native English speaker to pick up. I imagine that it will take more time than learning French but less time than trying to learn Japanese. There are couple of Western people that managed to learn Yoruba to a really high level (their Yoruba is so much better than mine).

Yoruba is a tonal language. But even if you butcher your tones completely, people would still be able to understand you but don't get discouraged if initially they tease you about your pronunciation.

A word of warning, be a bit careful to trying to practice Yoruba with second-generation Nigerians as a vast majority don't speak it well or are reluctant to speak it or may think you're taking the piss. But that being said we would be really pleased that someone is making an effort to learn our language but it can bring out feelings of shame as we can't speak it well enough to help someone in it.

But practically all first-generation Nigerians would be more than happy to help any Westerners that are sincere in wanting learn Yoruba.

I found some video of some non-Nigerians who speak Yoruba well and they talk about how they learn it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hTZ_mS7TsI

There's another of this guy who speak fluent Yoruba that were viral in Nigeria briefly and I remember being stunned by how well he spoke and the level of positive reception he got as a result of him speaking Yoruba- it's unbelievable.

[tiia]

Yeah, a lot of people learn Norwegian without any plans to move there (or anywhere else)...
I mostly know metalheads who learn the languages spoken in Nordic countries I do think there's also a lot of naïve romanticization, in various ways (not always harmless...) Besides, they're finally getting the recognition for their cultures that FIGS have had for centuries. Sisu, lagom, hygge...

Taking a look at those German citizens* I know who learned Finnish, Swedish or Norwegian, most of them were exchange students or/and metalheads. (But not all of them.) To be honest in my current Swedish course I would have expected even a few more metalheads.
One of my teachers admitted that she only heard of all the Finnish metalbands because of her students. And she added that most of the students give up once they realise that they cannot chitchat with their favourite musicians in Finnish after just two courses.

On the other hand I also know at least one Finn who learned German because of Rammstein.

*In order to exclude all the people I got to know while being in Finland.


Btw. African languages are definitely underrated. The arrival of the high number of refugees in 2015 might have given their languages more publicity. Suddenly there was quite a demand for interpreters for Tigrinya and other languages, most people had never even heard of before. I don't know whether it will get more people into such languages, but at least more people have now heard of them. So perhaps...

[Serpent]

And she added that most of the students give up once they realise that they cannot chitchat with their favourite musicians in Finnish after just two courses.

What counts as a course here?
Also makes me curious how strict the teacher was... I started writing guestbook posts in Finnish after like 2-3 months, and after a year I had my first quick chat You can also prepare some basic sentences in advance, like "thank you for the great concert", "I came from X to see your concert" etc. Usually there's not much time anyway.
And nowadays you can write them on facebook or instagram of course... When was that?

[tiia]

And she added that most of the students give up once they realise that they cannot chitchat with their favourite musicians in Finnish after just two courses.

What counts as a course here?
Also makes me curious how strict the teacher was... I started writing guestbook posts in Finnish after like 2-3 months, and after a year I had my first quick chat You can also prepare some basic sentences in advance, like "thank you for the great concert", "I came from X to see your concert" etc. Usually there's not much time anyway.
And nowadays you can write them on facebook or instagram of course... When was that?

Hm.. one sentence is not really chitchatting for me. To say just one sentence I wouldn't even try to find any course at all. So I guess the expectations would be higher than that.

I've had had the teacher in 2008, visited the course a last time in 2009. In my opinion her courses were/are quite good. We had a book, homework and she gave extra material mainly for vocabulary (usually part of the homework) and had additional excersises to practice the learned grammar. In our group were 6-7 students. Most of the students in that specific group didn't give up too soon. (I left because I moved too far away.)
I wouldn't describe her teaching style as strict, but of course I don't know how it would be with other groups or less motivated students. The group dynamic was really good, maybe a bit special. As far as I remember it was rare that someone missed a class.

One course was like 90min/week for uhm.. 14 times? When I try looking up those courses they nowadays vary between 19-20 weeks (first half of the year) and 12 times (second half of the year). I think it was something between back then.

---
From my experience a good course absolutely needs homework and regular attendence, especially of the weaker students. - It's mostly those not doing the homework or not coming often enough, who won't really make progress. They are likely to hinder the progress of the rest.

[Serpent]

You need to understand the responses as well And specifically Finnish is easy to mess up if you memorize it without understanding.
I didn't mean literally memorizing just one phrase of course, more like using them as anchors. However if they had goals like this, most of the course was simply going be a waste of time for them Besides if they tried to understand songs or interviews, they'd clash with puhekieli immediately.
As for strictness, what about the grammatical accuracy specifically? I'm forever insecure about my German due to having had really strict teachers