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What makes you learn a minority language? | ||
Tags: Rare Languages | Motivation | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6233 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes  Studies: German | Message 17 of 35 26 August 2007 at 5:07pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Out of some 7000+ languages most have less than 1 million speakers and are true minority languages. A language like Dutch cannot be called a minority language as there is no organized majority in global terms.
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| sluggy Bilingual Tetraglot Newbie Canada Joined 6089 days ago 24 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English*, Russian*, French, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 18 of 35 26 August 2007 at 5:23pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Personally, I love learning languages so much that I have no problem learning a language that for most people would seem 100% useless and a waste of time for no reason at all. I'm still working on "bigger" languages for the moment but in another year or two I plan on starting Yiddish (a dying language), and eventually Dutch, Modern Greek, and possibly Danish.
I have no plans to travel extensively in Holland, Greece, or Denmark, nor move to any of said countries. For me, it's learning the languages in itself that is fun. Isn't that enough of a reason? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| sluggy Bilingual Tetraglot Newbie Canada Joined 6089 days ago 24 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English*, Russian*, French, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 19 of 35 26 August 2007 at 5:26pm | IP Logged | |||||
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By the way, I already speak English, French, Russian, and (more or less) Spanish. All of those are "big" languages spoken by quite a lot of people, so I don't feel too worried that I should be learning more "big" languages to be able to communicate with lots of people.
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| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6336 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 20 of 35 26 August 2007 at 6:57pm | IP Logged | |||||
I lived in Tanzania for about 3 years, and I had a Thai girlfriend. Pretty solid reasons to learn smallish languages. I believe those of you who say you get pleasure out of totally isolated study of a less popular language. But am I the only one who finds the isolation wierd? I keep thinking, what if I lived in a small language community. I heard of a foreigner learning all about my language, but didn't want to have anything to do with any of my people. This would be strange. Aren't languages supposed to bring people together? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6554 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 21 of 35 27 August 2007 at 3:18am | IP Logged | |||||
I think that is a minor language, not a minority language. I think "minority" strongly implies a group that represents less than a majority in a given region. There's a subtle distinction between the two words. On a worldwide scale, all languages are minority languages (none spoken by 50%+), but not all are minor languages. :) Edited by Captain Haddock on 27 August 2007 at 3:20am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Frisco Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 6642 days ago 380 posts - 398 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Norwegian, Italian, Turkish, Mandarin | Message 22 of 35 27 August 2007 at 3:52am | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't have very practical reasons for learning the "smaller" languages on my list. Norwegian, Estonian, Georgian just feel interesting to me. Aspects of the language, culture, location all mixed together in a kind of image that is conjured up when I see the name of the language just grabs my attention.
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| Georgi87 Triglot Groupie Israel Joined 6087 days ago 43 posts - 44 votes Speaks: Russian*, English, French Studies: Japanese | Message 23 of 35 27 August 2007 at 6:53am | IP Logged | |||||
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Great question! For my own purposes, I'll use Captain Haddock's definition of minor languages. I started learning bits of Japanese (hiragana and katakana, and some basic phrases - nothing fancy) last summer, but, in part due to me feeling that Chinese would be a better option for my career, I took a Chinese module in university instead. Now, compared to Mandarin Chinese, Japanese is certainly a minor language; furthermore, everyone seems to think that a knowledge of Mandarin will be more beneficial to a Manager than knowledge of Japanese.
While I quite enjoyed Chinese (despite our terrible teacher), I always felt that, really, I should be doing Japanese. Loads of things about the language itself and the culture appeal to me, and I just get really motivated when it comes to learning it. I get a lot of pleasure from studying Japanese even when I'm working hard. And that's why I'm learning a relatively minor language :) At the end of the day, if we were all learning languages simply based on how many people speak them worldwide, we'd all be studying Mandarin (I think). So, yeah.. I guess "Passion" is the final answer :) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Snesgamer Groupie Afghanistan Joined 6397 days ago 81 posts - 90 votes Studies: English*, German, Spanish, Norwegian, Scottish Gaelic | Message 24 of 35 01 September 2007 at 1:54am | IP Logged | |||||
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There are reasons:
*It might be a part of that person's culture or background, and thus it provides a useful way for them to connect to their backgrounds in some way. This would be like me learning Norwegian in the future (I actually intend to) - it's not very useful here in America, but to me, it would help make me feel like a more complete person who understands himself and his roots better. *I don't think it's fair to limit a language's worth to how good it is as a business accessory or how many countries it is spoken in. Sometimes, the mere discipline learning even a "useless" language is worth the effort. In any case, I don't think any time spent learning languages is a waste, as it expands your mind and exercises your memory. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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