The Strangest Language

[Farnhamia]

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.

How dare you! *draws scimitar*

[The Truth and Light]

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.

Can you copy the verse please? Because it wouldn't make sense to say "Bedouins flew down from the sky" or some shit. Context helps.

[Buffett and Colbert]

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.

In Arabic, Hebrew, Farsi, etc, vowels do exist, but are not written. In Arabic, what we consider vowels do exist (alef and ya, aah and ee correspondingly), but are considered consonants. The unwritten ones make the eh, ee, and uh, sounds.

[The Truth and Light]

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.

If I may ask, what are you wanting to do at the UN?

[Buffett and Colbert]

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.

If I may ask, what are you wanting to do at the UN?

Gain ultimate power so I can convert you and your children into slaves.

Or maybe just join the legal department and move up the ladder with whatever comes my way.

[The Truth and Light]

Gain ultimate power so I can convert you and your children

I lol'd here.

Anyways, I hope you have good luck with your language learning.

[Greed and Death]

Klingon is the Strangest Language

Or at least the dorks at star trek conventions speaking it.
At least 3 of my relationships have ended due to my desire to have a Klingon ceremony.

[Buffett and Colbert]

Gain ultimate power so I can convert you and your children

I lol'd here.

Anyways, I hope you have good luck with your language learning.

Thanks, you too.

[Tthunka]

I've personally been teaching myself some Kirikir?i:s (Wichita), mainly because it is a very strange language:

*For one, it is one of only three languages with a distinction between three different vowel lengths (the others being Estonian and Mixe)

*It has basically no nasal consonants (n or m), "m" appears in only two words: kammac "to grind corn" and camma:ci "to hoe, to cultivate" and "n" is treated as the same sound as "r"

*It is also one of the few languages without "bilabial" consonants (sounds pronounced with the lips, like m, b, or p). As said before "m" only appears in two words and where related Caddoan languages have "p" or "b" Wichita has turned these sounds into "w" or "kw"

*It tends to be a language that likes to use lots of suffixes and prefixes in order to make really big sentence-words (which is normal for a Native American language): kiya:kíriwa:c?árasarikita?ahí:riks "he brought the big quantity of meat up to the top by means of many trips."

*Lastly, it does this rather odd thing where a verb can have a "preverb" : part of the verb that separates from the verb itself and allows prefixes (or I guess infixes) inbetween them. Now a lot of languages have infixes, but only usually one or two, where as in Wichita there can be a full FOURTEEN of these guys, including the noun object of the verb, which is incorporated straight into the verb.

It is really to bad that there is only one native speaker left, but luckly the tribe is working to revive it.

[Hellsgrind]

English.

[Cadonica]

No other language has so many swear words. Russian has more ugly, but Finnish has more swear, serious swear words. Most known is "Perkele!"

As for Finnish swear words - Perkele was stolen from the Balts. It's derived from the word Pērkons.

Well, now Perkele is as finnish as sisu. If you take it the way that it was stolen from balts, I bet that 90% of words in every language is derived from some other. But whatever.

[Forlon]

I've personally been teaching myself some Kirikir?i:s (Wichita), mainly because it is a very strange language:

*For one, it is one of only three languages with a distinction between three different vowel lengths (the others being Estonian and Mixe)

*It has basically no nasal consonants (n or m), "m" appears in only two words: kammac "to grind corn" and camma:ci "to hoe, to cultivate" and "n" is treated as the same sound as "r"

*It is also one of the few languages without "bilabial" consonants (sounds pronounced with the lips, like m, b, or p). As said before "m" only appears in two words and where related Caddoan languages have "p" or "b" Wichita has turned these sounds into "w" or "kw"

*It tends to be a language that likes to use lots of suffixes and prefixes in order to make really big sentence-words (which is normal for a Native American language): kiya:kíriwa:c?árasarikita?ahí:riks "he brought the big quantity of meat up to the top by means of many trips."

*Lastly, it does this rather odd thing where a verb can have a "preverb" : part of the verb that separates from the verb itself and allows prefixes (or I guess infixes) inbetween them. Now a lot of languages have infixes, but only usually one or two, where as in Wichita there can be a full FOURTEEN of these guys, including the noun object of the verb, which is incorporated straight into the verb.

It is really to bad that there is only one native speaker left, but luckly the tribe is working to revive it.

You're learning a Native American language? That's cool and good luck. I live in SoDak and we have the Sioux tribes and the Lakota language, that one can be odd but I don't know enough of it to really give examples of this.

[Meowfoundland]

Oubykh, the fun, probably extinct language with 84 consonants and only 2 vowels! Also, it's agglutinative, so the words have crazy amounts of syllables.

[Rolamec]

Hebrew.

From my extensive research of the language (which was an episode from Family Guy), all you have to do to master the dialect is begin pronouncing all words with a "Ha-" and carry it through with what would sound like you "hawking a loogy" but finish it with a "-th" at the end.

[The Archregimancy]

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.

Akkadian's not strange at all by global standards - it's a standard Semitic language closely related to Aramaic and Arabic. In fact, it's the earliest known Semitic language.

The only thing that's really odd about Akkadian is the writing system. It adopted Sumerian cuneiform, and Sumerian is a completely unrelated language isolate (much like modern Basque is). This meant using a writing system unable to fully represent Semitic phonemes, and adapting a syllabary to a language that's based on consonant clusters.

Translating that last bit into English, classical cuneiform characters typically representing a consonant plus vowel (no, Farn, I haven't forgotten some are still logograms - we're trying to keep this simple), such as 'KA' or 'ASH', but Akkadian, like modern Arabic, is typically based on three letter root clusters. The most familiar to English speakers is the 's-l-m' root in 'Islam' and 'Muslim'.

Summed up, a syllabary can't adequately express the grammatical relationship of root clusters in a Semitic language. The upshot was an insanely complicated writing system that tried (and arguably failed; for 2000 years) to mix Sumerian syllables with Akkadian Semitic grammar, with the occasional logogram (character that represents a concept rather than sound) thrown in, and - just to keep things interesting - characters which could simultaneously be either logograms or syllables, often for punning effect, depending on context.

And for all that, the only Akkadian-specific phoneme that the Akkadians ever managed to add to cuneiform was a character to represent the (crucial to Semitic languages) glottal stop. It doesn't look like NS supports cuneiform characters (honestly, Max, how could you have let me down so badly), so I can't show you specific examples easily.


For strange ancient Mesopotamian languages, how about Elamite? It's a rare example of a language that uses the grammatical concept of 'suffixaufnahme', where gentive (possessive) case nouns decline to entirely match the nominative case - and often the number (singular, plural, etc.) - of the sentence head noun.

Oubykh, the fun, probably extinct language with 84 consonants and only 2 vowels! Also, it's agglutinative, so the words have crazy amounts of syllables.

We were discussing Ubykh all the way back on page 2...

In any case, Georgian's fairly lightweight when it comes to consonant clusters in the Caucasus.

Now Ubykh... that's a proper consonant cluster language. Ubykh has (or rather, had - the last native speaker died in the early 1990s) 84 different consonants - easily a record - and only two vowels. It's essentially impossible to write in the Latin Alphabet, though here's an attempt to try:

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/ubykh.htm

[St George of England]

Scouse.

[Meowfoundland]

We were discussing Ubykh all the way back on page 2...

In any case, Georgian's fairly lightweight when it comes to consonant clusters in the Caucasus.

Now Ubykh... that's a proper consonant cluster language. Ubykh has (or rather, had - the last native speaker died in the early 1990s) 84 different consonants - easily a record - and only two vowels. It's essentially impossible to write in the Latin Alphabet, though here's an attempt to try:

http://www.omniglot.com/writing/ubykh.htm

Dang. How about the Aboriginal Language where everything you say means the opposite?

[Azzers]

Sorry, 140+ different varations of basic 3 letter words depending on the situation. Arabic is hard and the 140+ varation stuff is just basic level arabic.

[Wamitoria]

Finnish.

[Zairoon]

tamazight.

[Jari Head]

This thing is 6 months old "It's dead, Jim"

[Pope Joan]

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

To those clicks, I would add these whistles-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/3241128.stm
which are oddly appealing.

[Bafuria]

My own native language, Icelandic.

[Pope Joan]

My own native language, Icelandic.

Although I do like the way women get their own matronymic last names.

[Bafuria]

My own native language, Icelandic.

Although I do like the way women get their own matronymic last names.

Actually, they almost always have a patronymic last name.