World's Stangest Languages

Just one more thing: English spelling may have (or actually has) much more examples of words that "abide" by spelling rules than it has "rebels". However, the rebels are always more conspicuous, aren't they? Especially when they include some of the most common words. :-)

In my opinion, one of the strangest languages in the world is Albanian. However, I still think that it is one of the most lyrical and poetic languages in the world too. Shtëpi is "house"; shtëpija is "The house"; shtëpija jeme is "my house"; Pullazi i shtëpisë is "The roof of the house". Kuptoj is "I understand"; S'kuptoj is " I don't understand". Some other oddities are zogu "The bird"; qumështi (pronounced choomshtee) "The milk"; Po and jo "yes and no", pusho! "Shut up" Zhduku ini! "Go away!' and ç'kâsht' fjala? "What's the matter? ; ju falem nderit "thank you" and ju lutem "please".

I remember a guy in a bookstore once showing his girl friend a book on Basque and saying "This is got to be one of the strangest languages in the world?". While I understood where he was coming from I didn't really agree. To me Basque falls within the normal range of human languages even though it is non-Indoeuropean.

Rather, it is more the ones that have very unsual sounds or grammar that are strange. In addition to Albanian, I would include Twi (West Africa) with its herukoptera "heliocopter" and naq'ab' jwinte "My finger" and the Axininca of South America with its çaa "anteater" and iC/hina "He lifted his body part".

<<Easterner writes the English "has a spelling which usually gives no clue as to pronunciation," It's not really as bad as all that. In fact most of the words in English are spelt quite sensibly. Take Easterner's very sentence for example. >>

Trust me...it is that bad. ;-) To a native english speaker of course they're tongue doesn't appear that challenging, it's all a matter of perspective.

I could give a couple of examples:

OPINION = O-PIN-YEN (where did the Y come from?}
MILLION = MIL-YEN
MANUAL = MAN-YUAL
etc.....


MONGER = MONG-GER (double G where only exists in its written form)
MANGO = MANG-G0
TANGO = TANG-GO
etc...

BANK = BANGK (missing G )
THINK = THINGK
THANK = THANGK
etc...


These irregularities (and many others) drive non-native speakers nutz ;-) (plural form of words are pronounced with a Z not an S!!!!!! LOL!)

for me the strangest language is Euskara(Basque), nobody knows where it comes from, what are the origins of the language, are there any similar languages to it, and so on, also it is said to be the hardest language for learning(for everyone!)

Also i dont undersatnd what makes people invent such stupid languages like TOKI PONA www.tokipona.org, in general conlangs are useless (Esperanto has lost any chances to become a universal language)

About pronouciation - the weirdest is english for me, it sounds as if the person has the full mouth of food and tries to say something great and important:)

Ha ha ha :-)))))

An example from Nootka, a language spoken in Western Canada:

The sentence "Tlihisma", which can be analysed as tlih-is-ma, means "The boat is grounded on the beach."

Now, the interesting part is that there is no word denoting a boat in this sentence. The part "tlih-" means "moving pointwise". It is not a noun, it does not stand for a thing or an abstract entity. It is more like a vector in physics. "-is-" means "on the beach". And "-ma" means "third person singular".

It is striking how different the Nootkas' way of analysing the world is from that of English speakers, isn't it?

The example is from B.L. Whorf's "Language, Thought and Reality".

People see their world in different ways because of their languages.

For example, the Piraha language in Brazil does not have numbers. When the people who spoke it were taught to count, they couldn't do it well.

Dear Ved,

Thanks for your example. There is another aboriginal (First Nations)language on Vancouver Island you may have heard of called Nuuchahnulth. Author John Stonham cites 30 lexical items related to "salmon" in this language, kind of like the 20 or so related to "snow" which Whorf claimed Eskimo (Innuit) had.

Dear Xatufan -

Re: "People see their world in different ways because of their languages."
I totally agree. This view is closely alligned with the Whorf hypothesis.

haha,English is weird

"haha,English is weird"

No... El idioma más raro es el chino, aparte del francés, por supuesto. El inglés el idioma mejor, y el español es el segundo.

*"inglés es el"

Puedo deciros seguramente, que no hay nada extraño sobre este idioma. Es completemente lógico y siempre es sufficiente para decir cualquier emoción. Si estáis aprendiendo idiomas como por ejemplo el chino o el francés, dejad de hacerlo inmediatamente, y el mundo será mejor. Porque el español te llevará al futuro. Algo que ningún otro idioma nunca pordría hacer. Ni ahora, ni nunca.

<<People see their world in different ways because of their languages>>

I think this goes both ways. Taking an absurd supposition, I wonder if Eskimos were to migrate to a more sunny area, like Florida, how soon and how much their language would change. So, as I see it, language first reflects the way you perceive your immediate surroundings, but on a second level it does influence the way you perceive the whole world. A very good example of this is colour terms, discussed in an earlier thread on this forum. I find it amazing how much languages differ in this respect (even within an area which is relatively homogenous culturally, like Europe).

<< Puedo deciros seguramente, que no hay nada extraño sobre este idioma. Es completemente lógico y siempre es sufficiente para decir cualquier emoción. Si estáis aprendiendo idiomas como por ejemplo el chino o el francés, dejad de hacerlo inmediatamente, y el mundo será mejor. Porque el español te llevará al futuro. Algo que ningún otro idioma nunca pordría hacer. Ni ahora, ni nunca. >>

¿De veras? Me has sorprendido. Quizá no eres un hablante nativo de español. La doble 'f' en 'suficiente' me lo demuestra. De cualquier manera, tu español es perfecto, y si no hubiera sido por ese pequeñísimo error ortográfico, de verdad creería que eres español. O a lo mejor sí lo eres y te confundiste con el inglés. Creo que el chino es el idioma del futuro.

It kind of depends on what you mean by strange.

Catalan and Alsatian are two languages that are a bit strange because them mix different European tongues together in a way that is foreign.

Romanian is weird to me because its a romance language that I almost never hear.

I dont' find Chinese weird because I've heard it spoken so frequently, although it is certainly a strange (though very beautiful, in my opnion) sound to Western ears.

On a related note, I heard a little-known language spoken in Western China called Uyghur the other day, spoken by the muslims who live in that region. It sounded very unusual to me--it's one of the only languages I've heard that features both the French (uvular) "r" and the English (palatal, I think?) "r." It sounded like a strange combination of French, English, Arabic and Chinese.