minor languages

curiosity   Sat Sep 05, 2009 6:37 pm GMT
Which minor languages would like to learn and why?
Here is a list of languages:

Basque
Lithuanian
Hungarian
Bengali
Indonesia
Serbian
Slovene
Greek
Albanian
Berber
Quechua
Tamil
Nepali
Dutch
Swedish

As a European I'd love to learn Lithuanian and Basque. The former because it is one of oldest Indo-European languages and it's quite interesting from a linguistic point of view, the latter because it is not related to any other European language and both its grammar and syntax must be really appealing and exotic.
Franco   Sat Sep 05, 2009 6:44 pm GMT
Dutch (Flemish to be more precise) because it's the next world lingua franca.
Baldewin   Sat Sep 05, 2009 6:46 pm GMT
From this list Indonesian is on my list. Why? Because it's a very analytic language, it has a low entry level, but it's also a very poetical and musical language because of its phonology. You also are free to use more archaic form in poetry.
Just like most analytical languages it's easy to use as medium, but harder to use more elegantly.
What also makes Bahasa Indonesia interesting is that the Bahasa Malay where it originates from is some kind of organic Esperanto. It's a language spoken by native speakers of more than hundred different language in throughout a huge country, without ever being exposes.
This must be a very fascinating language indeed.
Baldewin   Sat Sep 05, 2009 6:47 pm GMT
What I said but without the grammar mistakes.
Franco   Sat Sep 05, 2009 6:51 pm GMT
Indonesian and Tamil are not "minor" languages. Both are more spoken than French for example.
balde   Sat Sep 05, 2009 6:56 pm GMT
Yes, they are but they are not as studied as French worldwide for exemple. Please Stop writing nonsense in this thread, please. I hope Spanish and French people will not invade this thread too.
Franco   Sat Sep 05, 2009 7:09 pm GMT
Just because they are not studied does not make them "minor " languages. Then Chinese would be a minor language too.
blanc   Sat Sep 05, 2009 7:15 pm GMT
Franco = Hitler go to hell or are you already in hell? IoI
Baldewin   Sat Sep 05, 2009 7:40 pm GMT
Don't forget that Dutch is the most influential minor language of the EU. It's rated 6th on the top of wiki entries. This for a language only natively spoken by 23 million people. It's doing a good job of using all its potential.
Baldewin   Sat Sep 05, 2009 7:41 pm GMT
In other words: Dutch is the biggest of the 'small' languages.
bald   Sat Sep 05, 2009 8:37 pm GMT
Franco   Sat Sep 05, 2009 8:41 pm GMT
Dutch has many entries but depth is low, 29 only.
Franco   Sat Sep 05, 2009 8:44 pm GMT
The worst thing about non English wikipediae is the fact that many articles are mere translations of the respective English ones and also have photos and other audiovisual content of the English wikipedia. Wikipedia should create a index that tells the degree of originality of Wikipedia writen in other languages because that's really significant and not the number of articles.
Baldewin   Sat Sep 05, 2009 9:28 pm GMT
True, which proofs that English is the modern Latin. Still, region-related articled are often more detailed in the corresponding language itself. I have also seen some non-English articles without an English counterpart, but rarely.
zizzi   Sat Sep 05, 2009 9:35 pm GMT
-serbian and swedish because of the pitch accent. it's really hard to learn it and it sounds interesting.
-albanian and basque as well