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Learning rare languages

  Tags: Rare Languages
 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages Post Reply
40 messages over 5 pages: 1 24 5  Next >>
ennime
Tetraglot
Senior Member
South Africa
universityofbrokengl
Joined 5905 days ago

397 posts - 507 votes 
Speaks: English, Dutch*, Esperanto, Afrikaans
Studies: Xhosa, French, Korean, Portuguese, Zulu

 
 Message 17 of 40
24 May 2010 at 2:18pm | IP Logged 
I'm trying to learn Nama/Khoekhoegowab... which has so little materials... almost no
courses, and only one dictionary in print that even in south-africa is near impossible to
find... for the most part it's through one nama friend I have that I learn
2 persons have voted this message useful



NativeLanguage
Octoglot
Groupie
United States
nativlang.com
Joined 5339 days ago

52 posts - 110 votes 
Speaks: French, Spanish, English*, Italian, Latin, Ancient Greek, Portuguese, Catalan
Studies: Japanese, Mayan languages, Irish

 
 Message 18 of 40
24 May 2010 at 6:37pm | IP Logged 
For many very rare languages, the linguistic's section at a college library may provide your only resources.

When I was studying Luiseno (an Uto-Aztecan language spoken by the indigenous people of Southern California), the only resource I had was an extremely old linguistic study of the language done by a linguist.

The resources will be a bit more dense (potentially more dry as well) than the normal language learning courses with a heavy focus on minute details of grammar and pronunciation; however, if you know how to make use of it, you can actually learn quite a bit from these types of books.

You can also get creative and learn languages through other similar types of language. I had a professor that wanted to study Mayan writing, but there were not that many resources available. He began studying Chinese writing instead because Chinese and Mayan characters had many structural similarities, but, there was a whole lot more information available for Chinese.
2 persons have voted this message useful



The Blaz
Senior Member
Canada
theblazblog.blogspotRegistered users can see my Skype Name
Joined 5601 days ago

120 posts - 176 votes 
Speaks: English*
Studies: Spanish, Swahili, French, Sign Language, Esperanto

 
 Message 19 of 40
25 May 2010 at 6:25am | IP Logged 
I've studied Swahili which I wouldn't consider a rare language. There are quite a food
high quality resources for it. I'm about to spend 3 months in a Luganda-speaking region,
and I've found there is a comparative lack of resources. My university library had some
old 1960s materials which I can't take with me. There's some stuff online. The FSI course
online is not complete - there is the teacher edition but not the student edition of the
basic course.
1 person has voted this message useful



katyr
Newbie
United States
Joined 5308 days ago

6 posts - 6 votes
Speaks: English*
Studies: French

 
 Message 20 of 40
25 May 2010 at 8:41am | IP Logged 
I am interested in studying Ilocano. It is a dialect in the Philippines. I'd also like to learn Tagalog, but I am having problems deciding which to learn first. Ilocano is my family's dialect, so that is why it's important to me. :)
1 person has voted this message useful



yomismo123
Newbie
Spain
Joined 5248 days ago

2 posts - 2 votes

 
 Message 21 of 40
14 July 2010 at 7:58pm | IP Logged 
TixhiiDon wrote:
Volte wrote:
I've looked high and low for Georgian audiobooks, with no success. I'm
a reasonably good searcher, and I spent hours on this. I hope they exist.

The translated literature situation also seems grim, though I haven't looked into that
in depth. "The knight in the Panther Skin" is fairly widely translated (I have a copy
in Esperanto), but most works aren't. At least the classics are
readily available in Georgian,
which is more than can be said for many languages.


Thanks for the tips Volte. I do have the newspaper reader and yes, it is very good,
but I hadn't found the literature site, so that's a great discovery for me.

FromRussia.com has quite a few books in Georgian. I just ordered some the other day,
although I'm not really at a high enough level yet to actually read them! I also
ordered an old translation of "A Sunny Night" by Dumbadze, so I will at least have a
Georgian and an English version of a modern novel to read together. I'm planning a
trip to Georgia in Summer 2011, so if you can hang on for a year and a bit I'll try and
find some audiobooks while I'm there!

1 person has voted this message useful



yomismo123
Newbie
Spain
Joined 5248 days ago

2 posts - 2 votes

 
 Message 22 of 40
14 July 2010 at 7:59pm | IP Logged 
Howard I. Aronson „Georgian: A Reading Grammar“ Slavica Publisher Inc. 1990, ISBN 0-89357-207-1, gemeinsam mit dem nachfolgenden Titel umfassendes sprachwissenschaftliches Lehrbuch des Georgischen
Howard I. Aronson und Dodona Kiziria: „Georgian Language and Culture: A Continuing Course“.
Marcello Cherchi „Georgian“, Lincom Europa, München 1999, sprachwissenschaftlicher Überblick ähnlich der Grammatik von Fähnrich (aber in englisch und weniger ausführlich)
George Hewitt „Georgian: a learner's grammar“, London 1996, gutes Lehrbuch mit modernen Texten und vielen Übungen
Shorena Kurtsikidze „Essentials of Georgian Grammar – With Conjugation Tables of 250 Most Commonly Used Verbs“, LINCOM GmbH 2006. Modernes Lehrbuch mit Übungen und Verbtabellen im Anhang
Tamar Makharoblidze „Basic Georgian“, Lincom GmbH 2008. Georgisch Intensivkurs mit 28 Lektionen, Übungen, Vokabellisten, Grammatikerläuterungen
1 person has voted this message useful



Arekkusu
Hexaglot
Senior Member
Canada
bit.ly/qc_10_lec
Joined 5382 days ago

3971 posts - 7747 votes 
Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto
Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian

 
 Message 23 of 40
14 July 2010 at 8:01pm | IP Logged 
I spent a year in Burkina some 15 years ago and I studied some Mooré. Materials are next to impossible to find, and those that do exist are crappy!
1 person has voted this message useful



Asiafeverr
Diglot
Senior Member
Hong Kong
Joined 6343 days ago

346 posts - 431 votes 
1 sounds
Speaks: French*, English
Studies: Mandarin, Cantonese, Shanghainese, German

 
 Message 24 of 40
15 July 2010 at 2:03pm | IP Logged 
I learned Shanghainese from the very limited selection of books I found in Hong Kong and Shenzhen and I
am now improving it past the textbook level by speaking with native speakers in Shanghai. I also plan on
learning various Chinese dialects such as Chongchinghua and Yunnanhua by looking for native speakers
on Chinese websites and ask them to translate and record articles. I took a look at faith by hearing but they
do not have the Bible translated in most of the dialects I want to learn.


1 person has voted this message useful



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