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Understudied European languages | ||
Tags: European Languages | Rare Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Préposition Diglot Senior Member France aspectualpairs.wordp Joined 4924 days ago 186 posts - 283 votes  Speaks: French*, EnglishC1 Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Swedish, Arabic (Levantine) | Message 17 of 85 16 December 2010 at 10:16am | IP Logged | ||
That was meant to exclude "regional or minority languages", but if we're counting them in, then Breton is definitely on the list. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Kisfroccs Bilingual Pentaglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 5219 days ago 388 posts - 549 votes Speaks: French*, German*, EnglishC1, Swiss-German, Hungarian Studies: Italian, Serbo-Croatian | Message 18 of 85 08 January 2011 at 7:10pm | IP Logged | ||
As far as i know, in Hungary they have the choice of learning German or English (or both). A lot of elderly people, or in the generation of the age of my parents speaks a bit Russian and German, the younger generation tends to speak English (but I was surprised of the amount of people speaking German). Anyway, that's my personnal experience. :) In western Europe, these languages (Hungarian, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian etc) are not common studied languages. I had a great deal of difficulty to find adequate material for my Hungarian, for instance, as nobody had interest in studying it. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| TheIcelander Newbie Iceland Joined 4879 days ago 7 posts - 9 votes Speaks: Icelandic* | Message 19 of 85 08 January 2011 at 7:27pm | IP Logged | ||
There are around 300.000 of us, don't think there are many people who study it though. I know J.R.R. Tolkien did, and Gandalf for one was the name of a dwarf from "Snorra- Edda" I believe, or well, it was in "Völuspá" which was really a fairly long poem, supposedly spoken by a sibyl to Óðinn, the main man out of the whole Nordic gods family. Sadly I don't know too much about this but I thought I'd just drop this in there, I'm aware that your post is fairly old though. Edited by TheIcelander on 08 January 2011 at 7:27pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| cathrynm Senior Member United States junglevision.co Joined 5935 days ago 910 posts - 1232 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Finnish | Message 20 of 85 08 January 2011 at 7:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Yeah, it's funny. When you study Finnish, you start to bump into other people who study Finnish. Studying Finnish is very uncommon, but I don't think so uncommon proportional to the size and population of the country. Learning materials aren't widespread, but they're out there. There's no 'Rosetta Stone' for Finnish, but I don't see that as a big problem. I think the unusual grammar is an attraction for some.
This is totally based on gut, but it seems to me Polish is less studied than you'd think, given its rising economic importance and the large community of Polish heritage Americans in the USA. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| aabram Pentaglot Senior Member Estonia Joined 5343 days ago 138 posts - 263 votes Speaks: Estonian*, English, Spanish, Russian, Finnish Studies: Mandarin, French | Message 21 of 85 08 January 2011 at 9:11pm | IP Logged | ||
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It is quite rare to see anyone studying Latvian or Lithuanian. Even Estonian, though
smaller language, seems to attract somewhat more attention due to having few interesting features (look, overlong vowels! 14 cases, neat!) but for example Latvian seems to fly under the radar mostly. Between my friends and acquintances we cover quite many European languages including somewhat rarely studied languages like Czech, Ukrainian or Icelandic but I do not know anybody who speaks Latvian. And we're neighbouring countries. Shameful, really. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Nudimmud Groupie United States Joined 5002 days ago 87 posts - 161 votes Studies: Greek, Korean | Message 22 of 85 09 January 2011 at 1:10am | IP Logged | ||
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If by least studied you mean: which language has the absolute fewest number of competent speakers who learned it as a second language, it would have to be a language, such of as Breton or Welsh which are on the verge of dying out and for which it's nearly impossible to find quality learning materials and native speakers. If you mean: which language is studied disproportionate to the size of population, I would say Turkish. Even though Turkey has a population nearly the size of Germany, it is far less studied that German. Of course one might object that only a minority of Turkish speakers are actually in Europe, as most of Turkey is in Asia. Regional dialects, i.e. languages that don't have an army and navy, such as Low German or Catalan, I would think would be contenders for least studied too, depending on how you weighted various criteria. Edited by Nudimmud on 09 January 2011 at 1:41am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tritone Senior Member United States reflectionsinpo Joined 5930 days ago 246 posts - 385 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, Portuguese, French | Message 23 of 85 09 January 2011 at 1:45am | IP Logged | ||
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Relative to it's size and scope, Portuguese is definitely the most understudied language.
It's one of the largest international "world" languages, and it's virtually unknown. 7 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Alanjazz Triglot Groupie United States Joined 4625 days ago 65 posts - 129 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese | Message 24 of 85 05 January 2012 at 10:47pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have to second Portuguese. Portuguese is (to my knowledge) never studied in the US outside of University-level
programs, which is so strange considering Brazil as a rising power and the amount of trade and connections to the US. As long as we are speaking about major languages, I think Italian is understudied. University programs are losing their Italian departments and I have never heard of it being offered at a lower level (excepting private schools). I also have never met a student of Dutch, only one heritage speaker who studied in the Netherlands for a year to learn it. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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