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Highly Synthetic Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Keilan Senior Member Canada Joined 5087 days ago 125 posts - 241 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 1 of 11 05 May 2011 at 7:06am | IP Logged |
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Hey all,
I have been trying to decide which language to take on in addition to German, as I'd like to see some new things. I've thought of both Swahili (as it sounds neat) and Japanese (mainly because I want to work with international students, and many come from Japan). However, I've realized what I really want to learn is a type of language I often find problems regarding in my linguistics books. Namely the ones where you do almost everything through an affix. I'm super intrigued by languages where case, negation, tense, mood, even subject/object are indicated just by throwing affixes onto words. So I was wondering if one of you who has a good knowledge of world languages could give me some suggestions. My main criterion is above, I want a language that is highly synthetic where I can play with a bunch of inflectional affixes. Beyond that, I'm looking for things such as familiarity (the further from English the better, I'm fine with Indo-European but I'd rather it be a fairly distant IE language) and usefulness in dealing with immigrants (as in, something that many immigrants to Canada/US speak) although those are both secondary criteria. Many thanks! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5670 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 2 of 11 05 May 2011 at 8:05am | IP Logged |
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I can highly recommend Czech: it is a heavily inflected language, with a complicated
grammar. Not sure how many Czech immigrants there are to Canada, but beyond that, I am sure you will find it satisfying (and frustrating). 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Alexander86 Tetraglot Senior Member United Kingdom alanguagediary.blogs Joined 4982 days ago 224 posts - 323 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, German, Catalan Studies: Swedish | Message 3 of 11 05 May 2011 at 8:50am | IP Logged |
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Russian!!! If German is like "Maths", Russian is like "Pure Maths"... But I fear that
despite having more cases, different vocabulary and a different alphabet it may still not be distant enough for you? Why not go with the Japanese if that's what first came into your head? 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5925 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 4 of 11 05 May 2011 at 9:44am | IP Logged |
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I thought of Japanese or Korean. These languages have very complex grammars that make use of many affixes and there are many speakers in Canada and the USA. You might also want to consider Turkish, Hungarian or Finnish. Edited by mick33 on 05 May 2011 at 9:47am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| cntrational Triglot Groupie India Joined 5128 days ago 49 posts - 66 votes Speaks: Hindi, Telugu, English* Studies: French | Message 5 of 11 05 May 2011 at 9:59am | IP Logged |
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You might like agglutinative languages like Japanese, Turkish, or Finnish, but they aren't highly synthetic. (And Russian, German, and Czech? Hah!)
For a hardcore polysynthetic language, the native languages of the Americas are a good choice. Navajo, Inuktitut, Cherokee... the list goes on. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5179 days ago 1116 posts - 1367 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Japanese, Korean, French, Mandarin, Italian, Vietnamese Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swedish Studies: Danish, Dari, Kirundi | Message 6 of 11 05 May 2011 at 10:44am | IP Logged |
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I have read about Georgian that there is plenty of affixes, but I am not learning it, so I don't now. In Korean there is plenty of affixes, but you cannot join many of them together, in Turkish you can, so I would suggest it.
Edited by clumsy on 05 May 2011 at 11:14am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Keilan Senior Member Canada Joined 5087 days ago 125 posts - 241 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German | Message 7 of 11 05 May 2011 at 5:11pm | IP Logged |
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Hey everyone,
I had kind of been assuming that Japanese was very isolating. It appears from these suggestions that I may have been wrong. So I might look further into that. As for the native languages... I have looked at those a bit... and they are scary! I'm hoping to sit in on a class for a native American language next semester, so I'll get a taste of that there. Thanks for all your advice! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| ChiaBrain Bilingual Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5809 days ago 402 posts - 512 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish* Studies: Portuguese, Italian, French Studies: German | Message 8 of 11 05 May 2011 at 9:54pm | IP Logged |
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I think Esperanto has a system of affixes that can be used to make new words.
1 person has voted this message useful |
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