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Learning rare languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4912 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes  Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 33 of 40 11 July 2012 at 3:41pm | IP Logged | ||
I think this is true for some lesser known languages, but not all. I've had a hard time finding good resources for Ojibwe, for example, for a couple of reasons: it's largely still an oral language, aside from some very old dictionaries compiled in the 1800s. Actual learning materials are few and far between for the language, and what I have found just doesn't get me very far. There's virtually no other written material other than a few recordings of elders speaking. Contrast that with Piedmontese (my last 6WC and I'm continuing to study it), which has about 2 million speakers, if ethnologue and wikipedia are to be believed. I can find loads of material: grammars, courses and genuine text. Aside from the obvious size difference in number of speakers, there's been a movement for some time to officially recognize the language and it's created a vocal, if not large online community with which to interact. A lot of the genuine text I'm finding online for Piedmontese is from regular contemporary people just talking about their lives and interests. I like finding this type of resource, because it's current and living, not just poetry or religious text. R. == Edited by hrhenry on 11 July 2012 at 4:02pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6485 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 34 of 40 12 July 2012 at 10:57am | IP Logged | ||
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As far as I can see hrhenry's experiences with Ojibwa and Piedmontese illustrate the points I made: a serious study of Ojibwa is almost excluded unless you live among the remaining native speakers because of the lack of grammars, dictionaries and texts in combination with the lack of an active internet community who uses the language.
In contrast you can sit far away in the USA and study Piedmontese because it has got both study materials and an active internet community. We can discuss how (and even whether) you can study languages where one of those factors is missing (like _prz's Bislama), but there can be no doubt that having both is the ideal situation. Edited by Iversen on 12 July 2012 at 11:07am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| MaDaZi Newbie United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4286 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: English* | Message 35 of 40 27 July 2012 at 1:11am | IP Logged | ||
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Well, I like Mongolian, Thai, Abenaki (Which uses a letter and diacritic that looks so
much like an 8), and perhaps Classical Nahuatl. Even if there aren't many grammar resources, if you can find some texts and their translations, it can be fun to figure out the grammar from that, like a puzzle of sorts Edited by MaDaZi on 27 July 2012 at 1:12am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| vonPeterhof Tetraglot Senior Member Russian FederationRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4554 days ago 715 posts - 1527 votes Speaks: Russian*, EnglishC2, Japanese, German Studies: Kazakh, Korean, Norwegian, Turkish | Message 36 of 40 27 July 2012 at 11:16am | IP Logged | ||
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I have recently finished my little foray into Abkhaz. I completed part I of Самоучитель абхазского языка by Джонуа and Киут (haven't been able to find the second part; not even sure if it exists), read a few chapters from Abkhaz: A Comprehensive Self-Tutor by George Hewitt. I also used the Abkhaz-Russian dictionary by Каслаӡия/Касландзия, the Russian-Abkhaz dictionary by Бҕажәба/Бгажба and the Abkhaz keyboard at apsni.com, a site which, unfortunately, won't exist for much longer. While I did find the language very interesting to wrap my head around, it's so wildly different from the other languages I'm trying to learn/retain at the moment (polysynthetic verbs with ergative-ordered personal prefixes; more than 50 consonants, some of which are labialized and ejective; lack of cognates in the basic vocabulary, etc.) that I simply can't dedicate enough of my time and attention to it without neglecting the others. Since I'm preparing for the JLPT this year I kinda need to focus most of my attention on Japanese, and it's hard to do when more than a third of my Anki cards are in Abkhaz (and I fail about half of those anyway). I decided to keep my Abkhaz Anki deck shelved for the time being and to keep occasionally reading Hewitt's, just to satisfy my linguistic curiosity. Edited by vonPeterhof on 27 July 2012 at 11:18am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| clumsy Octoglot Senior Member Poland lang-8.com/6715Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4960 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 37 of 40 08 August 2012 at 5:15pm | IP Logged | ||
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If you yearn to study a language with few resources in your native language, it's a good idea to try to search for textbooks in some other languages you are familiar with.
For example if your language is spoken in Russia, try searching for Russian textbooks. In China, try Chinese textbooks. I have myself a lot of textbooks for Chinese speakers on languages like: Zhuang, Hani, Naxi, Yi, Mongolian etc. The French series 'parlons' is notorious of publishing textbooks about rare languages. As for Corsican, I always though they spoke Italian. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Theodisce Octoglot Senior Member Poland Joined 5668 days ago 127 posts - 167 votes Speaks: Polish*, Latin, Ancient Greek, Russian, Czech, French, English, German Studies: Italian, Spanish, Slovak, Ukrainian, Serbo-Croatian, Greek, Portuguese | Message 38 of 40 11 August 2012 at 7:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'd like to learn enough Macedonian to explore authentic content. I doubt if Albanian counts, but it's definitely on my long list. As far as ancient languages are concerned, I once had an occasion to study Grabar and would like to resume my studies at some point.
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| rewire Groupie United States learninglane.tumblr.Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4329 days ago 82 posts - 90 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Mandarin | Message 39 of 40 29 August 2012 at 6:54pm | IP Logged | ||
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I suppose my most "rare" language on my list is Taiwanese, though it's spoken by a majority of Taiwan, and it's really considered the standard of the Hokkien dialects, I think? So I don't really know if it counts. But it is kind of difficult to find English-references for online. The ones I come across are seem to either be very incomplete or are link resources to dead sites. I did find this page, though which seems to have several links that might actually be of use.
My reasons for learning it are mostly because it's a heritage language for me. But it's sort of just a personal project since all the family members I know who speak Taiwanese also speak another, more common language, like English, Mandarin, or Japanese, so I don't really need it. I may end up waiting to seriously study it until I actually have Mandarin fluency/literacy, as theoretically Mandarin resources will be more prevalent than English resources. And/or I'm contemplating a stay in Taiwan for a while to learn, as I know there are language schools for Taiwanese, too. Edited by rewire on 29 August 2012 at 6:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| viedums Hexaglot Senior Member Thailand Joined 4448 days ago 327 posts - 528 votes Speaks: Latvian, English*, German, Mandarin, Thai, French Studies: Vietnamese | Message 40 of 40 08 September 2012 at 4:38am | IP Logged | ||
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I think Taiwanese definitely qualifies as a rare language in this context. Even if materials for learning it are being produced, there is no consensus about things like how to write words that don’t have a corresponding character in Mandarin. Some texts might mix Bopomofo with characters, others do something else. It gets messy, and the production of new materials actually makes the problem worse.
I know Taipei Language Institute in Taichung (where I studied Mandarin) has classes in Taiwanese. But why not go there to perfect your Mandarin, and at the same time check out the situation with Taiwanese? You’ll hear it all around you of course, especially if you’re staying with relatives. I had a couple of huaqiao classmates from Indonesia who were in this situation. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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