The Strangest Language

[Angleter]

Esperanto. i know it is a created language, but half the words/phrases don't make any sense:

For example: Esperanto 1st then English (via Wikipedia):

Kiel vi nomiĝas?--

What is your name?

Bone--

All right

amuziĝi--

To enjoy oneself

lernejo--

School

Not to mention that hearing someone speak it makes them sound like they are trying to speak German in a fake Russian accent in French!

Those examples can all be construed as similar to words in one European language or another.

[Georgism]

Nah, tha's just his hobbies. For work he fights Nazis and Soviets for extremely rare artifacts.

And Soviets. They were Soviet forces in the later films.

EDIT: That might rank as one of the stupidist things I've ever ever said.

[Vragovia]

Finnish, Hungarian and Turkish are weird, I have to admit. But their predecessor Sumerian , of which we know only half or maybe even less is the strangest, most beautiful and definitely most difficult from my perspective (my native language is Macedonian and I'm really familiar only with French, English and Latin). So if you ask me, those black headed guys and galls are the champions in terms of language beauty. You could probably find weirder and more difficult ones but none sounds so good, to me at least.

I was wondering, how much difference is there between Macedonian and Bulgarian? Is it a French-vs-Italian sort of difference (that is, two different languages but clearly stemming from the very same one), a Slovak-vs-Czech difference (that is two local variants of a language, different but mutually intelligible), or a Croatian-vs-Serbian difference (two dialects of the same language, almost undistinguishable to a foreigner)?

Well, probably closer to French-vs-Italian than Slovak-vs-Czech but somewhere in between. I understand about 60% of it when they talk and I must say it brings tears to my eyes from laughter and makes me roll on the floor, but I suppose that also goes the other way 'round.

[Equimanthon]

Gotta be Piraha, all the words sound exactly the same to me. And Welsh for writing, it's literally just a mishmash of consonants.

[The Archregimancy]

Correct.

I've gone hunting with the Efé subgroup of the BaMbuti pygmies in the Ituri rainforest of the Congo (true story), and they are definitely not bushmen.

Is that what one does as an archeology professor? If so, sign me up...

Not all the time. This past summer, for example, I instead took a helicopter to an uninhabited desert island off the coast of Venezuela said to have once been one of the haunts of Henry Morgan and Blackbeard, while his co-pilot - a scar-faced former gold miner - tried to talk me into joining him in the jungle to look for the lost Incan city of gold (also a true story).

What this has to do with strange languages escapes me, but I'll think of something relevant eventually.

[Norstal]

I think the strangest real-life language is a language that is not known by anyone. Alive. Ever. Lo and behold, the Voynich manuscript.

Not even Arch can read it. Well, maybe that's because it's just jibberish. Or is it? I'm curious as to what he has to say on this.

[The Archregimancy]

I think the strangest real-life language is a language that is not known by anyone. Alive. Ever. Lo and behold, the Voynich manuscript.

(Image)

Not even Arch can read it. Well, maybe that's because it's just jibberish. Or is it? I'm curious as to what he has to say on this.

If it's real, it's most likely not a 'strange language', but rather an undeciphered cipher of an existing language.

If it's a hoax, then the question is irrelevant.

As the parchment and ink have recently been dated to the 15th century by scientifically reputable scholars, I'm inclined to think it's real. Beyond that, I have no real insight into the manuscript.

[Maltropia]

The post I was quoting having been deleted, I'll just say that Latin isn't strange. Whether or not you can decline and conjugate much of its vocabulary, other languages have that too, but with weirder sentence construction.

Obviously, I'm no expert, but I've studied enough Latin to know it makes sense to me.

[Former Principalities]

Finnish, Hungarian and Turkish are weird, I have to admit. But their predecessor Sumerian , of which we know only half or maybe even less is the strangest, most beautiful and definitely most difficult from my perspective (my native language is Macedonian and I'm really familiar only with French, English and Latin). So if you ask me, those black headed guys and galls are the champions in terms of language beauty. You could probably find weirder and more difficult ones but none sounds so good, to me at least.

I was wondering, how much difference is there between Macedonian and Bulgarian? Is it a French-vs-Italian sort of difference (that is, two different languages but clearly stemming from the very same one), a Slovak-vs-Czech difference (that is two local variants of a language, different but mutually intelligible), or a Croatian-vs-Serbian difference (two dialects of the same language, almost undistinguishable to a foreigner)?

Macedonian and Bulgarian are considered to be mutually intelligible, meaning that a Macedonian and a Bulgarian could probably sit down and have a conversation with few interruptions... so by your classifications it is more of a Czech-Slovak difference. Although if it was heard by a foreigner they would sound the same.

I actually managed to experience this when my Dad and I were taking a train from Salonika to Athens during our Euro-tour extravaganza last year, and encountered a Bulgarian family in the same carriage as us. We were pretty much able to understand most of what was being said.

[Buffett and Colbert]

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

spanish is worst in that term

No it isn't.

[Buffett and Colbert]

I find Arabic to be very strange.

[Trotskylvania]

Latin clarum brevitas. Auditur aliquid mirum. Latinitas puto sua forma.

[John Glow]

Smurf language. Oh and btw, Smurf you all!

[Trotskylvania]

Smurf language. Oh and btw, Smurf you all!

Have a nice smurf, smurfer!

[Laos Refugees]

I'm going to have to punch myself and say Lao, such a small and ridiculous language.
If dead languages work too, I'll say Akkadian.

[Nazis in Space]

San. It is also probably our original language.

Languages don't randomly stay the same for anywhere between 100- 1000 k years.

srsly

Pygmies are kind of just miniature Black people, Bushmen are an entirely different race predating, if I remember correctly, the arrival of Black people in southern Africa.

Bushmen are quite black, really. They do, however, predate the arrival of Bantu-speaking peoples in South Africa (The Bantu arriving at roughly the same time as the Dutch cum Boers).

[Tehraan]

San. It is also probably our original language.

Languages don't randomly stay the same for anywhere between 100- 1000 k years.

srsly

Pygmies are kind of just miniature Black people, Bushmen are an entirely different race predating, if I remember correctly, the arrival of Black people in southern Africa.

Bushmen are quite black, really. They do, however, predate the arrival of Bantu-speaking peoples in South Africa (The Bantu arriving at roughly the same time as the Dutch cum Boers).

What? the Dutch cum Boers?

[Mediterreania]

Navajo Native American. It's so complex that the US Marine Corps used it in lieu of encryption.

[Coccygia]

Of major languages, Japanese. Definitely devised by Satan.

[The Truth and Light]

I find Arabic to be very strange.

Is that why you're learning it? That's actually one of the reasons I tried to learn Japanese.

[Mercator Terra]

Navajo Native American. It's so complex that the US Marine Corps used it in lieu of encryption.

[The Truth and Light]

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

hebrew has no vowels at all...

Are you serious? It's SHALOM, not shlm.

[The Corparation]

Arabic. My friend explained some of it to me. If you say X it means X, if you write X it means Y. If you say Y it means Y if you write Y it means x, and if you misspell or mispronounce either you have just insulted someone.

[Buffett and Colbert]

I find Arabic to be very strange.

Is that why you're learning it? That's actually one of the reasons I tried to learn Japanese.

It's foreignness could be a part of it. It's cool sounding. But it also is spoken in many countries and looks good on a resume where international background is a plus.

[Farnhamia]

hebrew has no vowels at all...

Are you serious? It's SHALOM, not shlm.

That depends. In ancient Hebrew, signs for the vowels were not written, so "shalom" would be written "shlm." My favorite example is the passage in the OT where Elijah (I think) is alone in the desert and the crows bring him food. "Crows" in Hebrew in "harbim." Written without vowel marks, it's "rbm," which could also mean "arabim," or "bedouins." So instead of a miracle we have the prophet being fed by simple nomads.