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What is a non-mainstream language for you | ||
Tags: Rare Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5335 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 1 of 71 12 August 2012 at 1:53am | IP Logged | ||
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My country seems to be very conservative when it comes to foreign languages. You have the big four
(English, French, German and Spanish), which are taught in school - though Spanish is still considered a bit exotic, then there are a few who study Italian and a very select few who do Portuguese. Anything beyond that is considered "weird". People look at me like I were mad when I tell them I do Russian, and even I thought my colleague was far out when he said he was studying Japanese. Of course after two years here, almost everything seems mainstream, but I wonder what you would consider main stream and non-mainstream languages. I would include Russian, Japanese and Mandarin and possibly Arabic among the mainstream languages now, in addition to the languages mentioned above in the 10 most commonly studied languages. How would you classify them? Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 12 August 2012 at 1:55am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 2 of 71 12 August 2012 at 2:28am | IP Logged | ||
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In Russia Spanish is considered pretty exotic as well. More so than Italian because its culture is widely admired and it's very useful in certain industries, while Spanish is only useful if you work in tourism (where Italian is also very useful). But really in most regions anything but English, German, French is exotic. I suppose Finnish, Mandarin or Polish aren't that exotic in regions that border the respective countries, but otherwise yeah.
From my list, those I rarely mention and those that get you considered a weirdo are Catalan (unless you plan to move to Barcelona), Romanian, obviously Esperanto and toki pona, and also all the Slavic ones apart from Polish, because they're small and/or mutually intelligible with Russian. I also don't bother to mention Danish to those that aren't Scandinavia geeks :) and I only mention Karelian to those who know what it is, lol. I mention Indonesian when I want to be considered cool :D My own opinion is that English, German, French, Spanish, Russian, Japanese, Mandarin and Arabic are mainstream. Portuguese isn't :) Italian definitely isn't if you look at the whole picture and not just at Russian Celentano fans/art geeks etc. (I suppose if they were easier, Finnish and German would be almost as common for, ehm, cultural reasons :P there are TONS of people that want to study these, though only a handful ever try). 5 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 3 of 71 12 August 2012 at 2:34am | IP Logged | ||
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Solfrid Cristin: What is a non-mainstream language for you?
Chung (*smart-assed*): Look at what I'm studying. I treat any language other than Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish as outside the mainstream and this is largely corroborated by what I found on amazon.com. In turn there are various shades of "non-mainstreamness" with something like Inari Saami more strongly non-mainstream than Indonesian (or even Finnish), for example. On a related note, CARLA's definition of a less commonly taught language highlights a distribution that's even more skewed to "the West" when it notes:
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| blackbrich Newbie United States Joined 5230 days ago 13 posts - 30 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 4 of 71 12 August 2012 at 2:36am | IP Logged | ||
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I live in America southeast so anything that isn't Spanish is non-mainstream. French is a stretch but some
places maybe it can be mainstream-ish. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4623 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 5 of 71 12 August 2012 at 2:43am | IP Logged | ||
Yet your country shares a border with Russia. I suppose not many people live way up north but there must be some cross-border trade going on? In Scotland, French and German dominate the language curriculum in schools although Spanish has a significant presence and Mandarin is steadily gaining popularity. Japanese can also be found here and there. Latin was once a prized academic subject but has declined rapidly over the last 25 years. As far as adult evening classes go, Italian can be added to the list and Polish also features due to a high number of immigrants from Poland. I suppose anything outside the big Western European languages and the Asian business languages would be considered weird. Scots Gaelic is a funny one. It has virtually no presence in the central belt (where 80% of the people live) although a couple of Gaelic-medium primary schools have appeared. Opinion is likely to be split if you announce you are learning this language. Some would respect you for studying a language indigenous to the country and perhaps admit a little regret that they haven't made the effort. Others would dismiss the idea outright, labelling the language as dead or useless. What is the Scandanavian attitude to those who learn the Sami languages, or Danes who study Greenlandic? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4829 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 6 of 71 12 August 2012 at 3:03am | IP Logged | ||
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Just in terms of HTLAL posters, I don't think I've seen many people here studying
modern Greek, which surprises me when I come to think about it. Plenty of people doing Latin, and some doing classical Greek though. I would have thought modern Greek to be almost mainstream, but apparently not. It's no secret that the British aren't the greatest linguists, but to the extent that it can be said that languages are learned here, then French, German, & Spanish would be considered mainstream, with Italian probably a poor 4th. On the other hand, I see that the external studies department of the university in my nearest city, are offering (usually evening) classes in some fairly exotic languages: Arabic, Chinese , Greek, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish and Turkish. There is even an introduction to Sanskrit. (This is in addition to French, German, Spanish and Italian). Now, I don't know how many of those classes actually run. I suspect not all. But the fact that they are even offered is something. It has to be said that the city (and the university) is a fairly cosmopolitan place with a relatively sophisticated population. Oh yes, they also do Ancient Greek and Latin. No Danish (or Norwegian) though :-( Edited by montmorency on 12 August 2012 at 3:05am 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| NickJS Senior Member United Kingdom flickr.com/photos/sg Joined 4960 days ago 264 posts - 334 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Russian, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese | Message 7 of 71 12 August 2012 at 3:03am | IP Logged | ||
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As far as languages go I think all apart from dead languages are mainstream - simply due
to the nature of the highly populated earth we live on. However if I had to choose it would be probably romance languages that is taught in schools. The way I see it, if there is a language, there is someone learning it. Edited by NickJS on 12 August 2012 at 3:04am 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Jappy58 Bilingual Super Polyglot Senior Member United States Joined 4639 days ago 200 posts - 413 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Guarani*, Arabic (Levantine), Arabic (Egyptian), Arabic (Maghribi), Arabic (Written), French, English, Persian, Quechua, Portuguese Studies: Modern Hebrew | Message 8 of 71 12 August 2012 at 3:12am | IP Logged | ||
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It depends. On a language learning community, Spanish, Italian, German, French, Arabic, and most large languages are rather mainstream.
However, here in Texas (south Texas to be exact) I'd say Spanish is the most mainstream, while Arabic - though studied more now than ten years ago - is less mainstream than French and German (and Spanish, of course). Russian is also not as mainstream. In my opinion, out of the large Romance languages, Portuguese is the least mainstream. Italian is very frequently seen as a tempting language to study, despite that it's not as large as Spanish, French, and Portuguese. French is very commonly studied, though not as commonly spoken here as Spanish. Portuguese, however, is not quite popular, despite its large number of speakers and that it's probably generally just as accessible to native English speakers as the others are. Still, I wouldn't call Portuguese "non-mainstream"...just much relatively less mainstream. Out of Middle Eastern languages, Hebrew, in many of my experiences, has been more popular than Arabic - especially before 2001. Nowadays, it's just about even, if not Arabic taking the lead. However, Arabic is still not quite popular and it'll give you some interesting looks (compared to Spanish, French, and German). Persian and Turkish are definitely not mainstream here. Hindi-Urdu is definitely not mainstream, which I've always found surprising. Japanese could be considered mainstream, but few people (similar to Arabic and probably Mandarin) learn it past a basic level. In all, out of the major languages, here's my ranking from most mainstream to least mainstream where I live: Spanish French/German Italian Hebrew/Arabic/Japanese/Mandarin Russian/Portuguese Hindi/Urdu Turkish/Persian Despite Spanish's presence, however, it is still seen as impressive if you have a high proficiency (C1 and C2) in the language (as a non-native speaker). If you can speak any language other than English with an excellent command, you're cool. Edited by Jappy58 on 12 August 2012 at 3:15am 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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