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Understudied European languages | ||
Tags: European Languages | Rare Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Wilco Triglot Senior Member Canada Joined 6332 days ago 160 posts - 247 votes  Speaks: French*, English, Russian | Message 1 of 85 13 December 2010 at 5:08pm | IP Logged | ||
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Among all European national languages (excluding minority or regional languages like
Catalan, Basque, Corsican), which would you say are the less studied by foreign learners? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lianne Senior Member Canada thetoweringpile.blog Joined 5117 days ago 284 posts - 410 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Esperanto, Toki Pona, German, French | Message 2 of 85 13 December 2010 at 5:27pm | IP Logged | ||
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Well, there are obviously some that are more studied by foreigners, such as Spanish, Italian, German, etc. I would say in general eastern European languages seem to be less studied. At least that's my experience, being a Canadian who doesn't know anyone who's studied a language other than the popular Romance languages and German (or occasionally Japanese).
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| Merv Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5275 days ago 414 posts - 749 votes Speaks: English*, Serbo-Croatian* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 3 of 85 13 December 2010 at 5:33pm | IP Logged | ||
Generally-speaking, the Celtic branch, Greek, Armenian, Albanian, Caucasus languages (e.g. Georgian, Abkhaz, Ossetian, etc.), Finno-Ugric family, and the Slavic branch. The Slavic branch gets some decent study in Russian and Polish but less so in the other languages. I'm not sure what you mean by "regional languages"? All languages of countries that were not vast (colonial) empires are in some sense regional. Japanese is regional, so are German and Italian. They are important because they are vital exponents of science and technology and culture. But they are regional. More widespread European languages such as English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian, get a high level of attention not only due to their cultural significance but also because of their many speakers spread over a vast (formerly imperial, in many cases) territory. Nobody would take Portuguese more seriously than Bulgarian if it weren't for Portugal's colonies in Brazil and Africa vs. Bulgaria's restrictedness to the eastern Balkan peninsula. Edited by Merv on 13 December 2010 at 5:37pm 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6013 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 4 of 85 13 December 2010 at 8:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'd say a notable gap is the languages Scandinavia and the Netherlands. A fair number of people seem to start but never really get anywhere, simply because it's so easy to get by in English in these countries.
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| Polyglot_gr Super Polyglot Newbie Greece Joined 5097 days ago 29 posts - 64 votes Speaks: Greek*, FrenchC2, EnglishC2, GermanC2, Italian, SpanishC2, DutchC1, Swedish, PortugueseC1, Romanian, Polish, Catalan, Russian, Hungarian | Message 5 of 85 13 December 2010 at 8:46pm | IP Logged | ||
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Ukrainian is a good example of the degradation suffered by a major language that has not been an official language of any independent state for decades. Foreign learners treat Ukrainian as an inferior version of Russian, choosing to study the latter instead.
Finnish is another understudied language, mainly because of its notoriously difficult grammar and vocabulary. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| chucknorrisman Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5450 days ago 321 posts - 435 votes Speaks: Korean*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Lithuanian, French | Message 6 of 85 13 December 2010 at 9:50pm | IP Logged | ||
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Lithuanian, Latvian, Albanian, Romanian, all Slavic languages except Russian and to some extent Polish, Icelandic, Luxembourgish
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| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5569 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 7 of 85 13 December 2010 at 9:53pm | IP Logged | ||
Catalan is the official language of Andorra. 10 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| SamD Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6661 days ago 823 posts - 987 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Norwegian | Message 8 of 85 14 December 2010 at 2:33am | IP Logged | ||
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It depends on what you mean by "understudied." That word seems to suggest that some languages are "adequately studied." Maybe from time to time a language becomes chic or hot and is temporarily "overstudied." In my opinion, a language can't be overstudied.
Perhaps the most "understudied" languages are the ones with the largest number of native speakers and the smallest number of people learning them as native languages. If we define "understudied" European languages that way, the answer might be Polish, Ukrainian or Dutch. 5 persons have voted this message useful |
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