The Strangest Language

[The Truth and Light]

I'd have to say Russian. It's words are really long and it sounds very alien to my ears. Behind that is Mandarin, because it is very off base comparted to European languages.

What is the strangest language, NS?

[Islamic Hazarastan]

Sami. I do love it, though. This is why:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxXzcF4zMvk&feature=related

[Lunar Rai]

English. So many rules, so many exceptions, so many exceptions to the exceptions.

[Lackadaisical2]

Anything with tones. *shakes fist at East Asia*

[The Truth and Light]

Anything with tones. *shakes fist at East Asia*

Wǒ ài Zhōngwén.

[Angleter]

Vietnamese, for all the bloody accents.
Manchu, for being rare and Tungusic.
Navajo Apache, for just being plain weird.

[Arumdaum]

Welsh. Definately Welsh. The writing for it looks all funny. Also Italian's pretty weird to me.

[Chinese Regions]

Japanese; Three writing systems

[Arilando]

Turkish.

[Maltropia]

English. Seriously; it's a mishmash of everything else.

They even stole Smithereens from Irish "smidiríní." How uninspired!

[Bitchkitten]

English. So many rules, so many exceptions, so many exceptions to the exceptions.

Agreed. And it borrows from every language it's ever come in contact with. Someone sais something along the line of "Some languages borow from other languages. English follows them down the alley, mugs them and rifles through their pockets." Oscar Wilde, maybe?

[Rambhutan]

To my ears those click languages from the Kalahari, though I bet New Guinea has some pretty weird languages.

[Astralsideria]

South Asian languages (such as Singhalese), and certain African ones (such as Zulu) have always seemed quite horrible to me, but that might just be me... Welsh isn't exactly normal, either, but it's not the most weird, I don't think

[Jalanat]

Georgian, seriously so many consonant clusters, how the hell are you ever supposed to normally pronounce žblnknutie?

[Georgism]

Welsh. It looks ridiculous

[Howling Spears]

English. So many rules, so many exceptions, so many exceptions to the exceptions.

Agreed. And it borrows from every language it's ever come in contact with. Someone sais something along the line of "Some languages borow from other languages. English follows them down the alley, mugs them and rifles through their pockets." Oscar Wilde, maybe?

In shock i have to agree, im English myself, but sometimes i get soo confused....

In an combination of scotish and irish, with a hint of London cockney: Come laddies, time to go down the apples and pairs to feel us out some Fiddlesticks!

[Sun Aut Ex]

Personally, I'd have to say tonal languages, but Chinese and Vietnamese in particular. Welsh is also very odd.

English. Seriously; it's a mishmash of everything else.

They even stole Smithereens from Irish "smidiríní." How uninspired!

English seems more weird than it is because it retained medieval spelling while changing the pronunciation.

[Xarithis]

COBOL. It's just wrong.

Seriously though, Xhosa. Which I want to learn.

[The Araucania]

English. So many rules, so many exceptions, so many exceptions to the exceptions.

spanish is worst in that term

[Bitchkitten]

Ick. I looked at my previous post. So many typos. Honestly folks, I can spell. I just can't type.

[Maltropia]

Agreed. And it borrows from every language it's ever come in contact with. Someone sais something along the line of "Some languages borow from other languages. English follows them down the alley, mugs them and rifles through their pockets." Oscar Wilde, maybe?

In shock i have to agree, im English myself, but sometimes i get soo confused....

In an combination of scotish and irish, with a hint of London cockney: Come laddies, time to go down the apples and pairs to feel us out some Fiddlesticks!

I don't see what of that was Irish.

[The Archregimancy]

I'm disappointed. So far, I regret to say, most the choices in this thread (at least when I started writing this post) have been fairly uninspired - largely restricted to mainstream European and Asian languages; though I'll give Angleter mod cookies for Manchu (Islamic Hazarastan only gets half a mod cookie, for failing to recognise that there are at least nine distinct living Sami languages, even if only two of them have over 1000 speakers, and only one has over 10,000 speakers).

But one of the strangest languages has to be Hixkaryana. Spoken by some 500 indigenous Brazilians deep in the Amazon rainforest, it was the first Object-Verb-Subject (OVS) language ever described. In other words, where English speakers say "the jaguar ate the man", Hixkaryana has to take the word order "the man ate the jaguar" (or rather "toto yonoye kamara" - male person eat [past tense] jaguar); but with the same meaning as in English.

OVS is the rarest of possible sentence word orders. There are other languages which occasionally permit OVS (though even highly inflected languages with complex case systems that can hypothetically permit any word order often prefer a more common specific order - see Russian), but the number which require OVS is vanishingly small, limited to three or four indigenous languages of the Americas, none of which have over 5000 speakers.

[Nufilandia]

Vietnamese, for all the bloody accents.
Manchu, for being rare and Tungusic.
Navajo Apache, for just being plain weird.

^^ That

[Pentria]

Maltese

[The Archregimancy]

Georgian, seriously so many consonant clusters, how the hell are you ever supposed to normally pronounce žblnknutie?

Most Georgians will be baffled too, especially since you apparently expect them to be speaking Slovak...