chucknorrisman Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5449 days ago 321 posts - 435 votes Speaks: Korean*, English, Spanish Studies: Russian, Mandarin, Lithuanian, French
| Message 1 of 53 15 February 2010 at 4:54pm | IP Logged |
What is a very hard language for English speakers (or better yet, objectively) that its speakers can brag about? I know there are Mandarin and Japanese, but I'd like to hear about some lesser known stuff as well.
Edited by chucknorrisman on 15 February 2010 at 4:54pm
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GREGORG4000 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5524 days ago 307 posts - 479 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish Studies: Japanese, Korean, Amharic, French
| Message 2 of 53 15 February 2010 at 5:01pm | IP Logged |
Finnish
Navajo
Korean : P
seem to be the most well-known "hard" languages, aside from Mandarin & Japanese
though most speakers of English can brag about knowing any second language that isn't French or Spanish
Edited by GREGORG4000 on 15 February 2010 at 5:02pm
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datsunking1 Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5586 days ago 1014 posts - 1533 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: German, Russian, Dutch, French
| Message 3 of 53 15 February 2010 at 5:27pm | IP Logged |
And Americans can brag about knowing just ONE other language hahahahah :D
What about Russian? and Vietnamese
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lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5923 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole
| Message 4 of 53 15 February 2010 at 6:53pm | IP Logged |
Russian is a bragging language (I can tell you ;] ) but it's not the best you can do.
Swahili
Yoruba
Zulu
Xhosa
If it's "African", it can be admired (especially click languages. Even something like
Zulu, which doesn't have THAT many clicks, will cause people to lick your boots in
respect as you walk by). Basically, non-Indo-European languages earn you coolness points.
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Johntm Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5423 days ago 616 posts - 725 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 5 of 53 15 February 2010 at 8:03pm | IP Logged |
Learn a click language like lynxrunner said. Or learn something no one has ever heard of eg. a tribal language. The hard part would be finding materials to learn them with.
Anyway, good luck. Especially if you want to learn a click language, I want to learn one (maybe to intermediate fluency) eventually, mainly as a party trick or something to inflate me ego:D
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Toufik18 Bilingual Tetraglot Senior Member Algeria Joined 5745 days ago 188 posts - 202 votes Speaks: Arabic (Written)*, Arabic (classical)*, French, English
| Message 6 of 53 15 February 2010 at 9:36pm | IP Logged |
Although it's not so hard, Americans like to brag about French.
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Saif Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 5613 days ago 122 posts - 208 votes Speaks: English*, Arabic (Levantine)*, French
| Message 7 of 53 16 February 2010 at 1:38am | IP Logged |
I would add languages associated with hot political issues. So Arabic, Persian, Mandarin,
Russian carry bragging rights if you can speak them well.
Also any Asian language. Korean, Thai, Vietnamese. Even Malay/Indonesian. Most people
won't know if they're difficult or not, it sounds exotic so people will assume it's
tough.
Toufik18 wrote:
Although it's not so hard, Americans like to brag about French. |
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I second that. Italian too. Chic languages associated with sophisticated culture seem to
impress people.
Edited by Saif on 16 February 2010 at 1:40am
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snoppingasusual Quadrilingual Hexaglot Groupie Lebanon Joined 5568 days ago 49 posts - 65 votes Speaks: Arabic (Egyptian), French*, English*, Arabic (Written)*, Arabic (Levantine)*, Spanish
| Message 8 of 53 16 February 2010 at 7:00pm | IP Logged |
I think that the following languages can assure that you will be respected for knowing
them:
Nahuatl
Lithuanian
Rapa Nui
Turkish
Greenlandic
Scottish Gaelic
Navajo
Latvian
Gaelic Irish
Basque
Icelandic
Wolof
Hindi
Georgian
Albanian
Armenian
Burmese
Quechua
Czech
Finnish
Greek
Polish
Igbo
Slovak
Hausa
Zulu
Xhosa
Vietnamese
Aramaic
Korean
Avar
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