Thread: Anyone doing any useless..uh I mean...obscure languages?

I've NOT HEARD PEEP! about anyone learning Greek here.Quite a notable language that has been delegated to obsurity on this forum.Greeks, yiasou?
I'd like to know if anyone is learning very localized languages hidden away in a mountain village somewhere.Or even one's own home-made alphabets.And trekkers, Ahk bahk tich kuk? (no, that meant nothing.I don't speak Klingon).Hyvaa Paivaa, Elves! (I have hard enough a time finding anyone who'd know what language that greeting was in, let alone finding anyone whose dabbled in its fantasy-world off-spring).
Esperanto has been broached.
My answer to the poll? I'm not telling.Coz, those jackets are really uncomfortable.

EDIT: Here is a link displaying countless unusual alphabets.(Aswell, it has the commonplace ones we all know). There are ancient alphabets ie. Heiroglyphics, Runic etc. There are make-believe alphabets ie. Elvish, Klingon. Ones that users of this site created themselves eg. futuristic looking ones. Ones made for video games etc. And of course the run of the mill real alphabets ie. modern Arabic, Hebrew, Armenian, Korean etc.
http://www.omniglot.com/

Klingon and Elvish are only make believe if you consider Esperanto, a language with 2 million speakers, (Some of which native speakers) make believe.

Yay! Thanks BlackMage for participating in my poll.And it's the first time I've ever started a thread.So, ta! for being the opening respondant.
I think Esperanto is a great idea.For it to work, it'd have to be pursued by government.Maybe the United Nations should support its usage in schools throughout the world.Even though English is used as the global language, politics suggests to me that there should be a neutral language.Despite what public face diplomats put on, I do believe that non-English speaking countries resent having their own languages treated as second-class citizens.And on that note; I'd hate to be the one to tell a Klingon that his language holds no weight here.

Anyone doing any useless..uh I mean...obscure languages?

Yeah, Russian.

[sticks out tongue at VM]

Haha. A few years back I decided to take up Latin. Little did I know that it was a dead language. I thought it was still spoken on some isolated little volcano in Rome or something...

Ha ha.Yeah that's the reason I've never even contemplated learning Latin.Are you sure you were mis-guided though.Isn't Latin the official language (along with Italian?) of Vatican City.Your geography was at least half right.It's not volcanic, but Vatican City (actually a nation, I'm sure?) is within, or on the outskirts of Rome.But I'm assuming that accompanying your rude shoch of Latin being dead, is knowledge beyond my own on Vatican City's national and linguistic status.
I think it's the way that people go on about Latin's prestigiousness that could give one an impression it's a living language.very always says to me "You should learn Latin.It'll sharpen your intelligence".Alot of pretence surrounding it, unfortunately.But, I don't dismiss the excitement of reading the endless amounts of ancient texts in their original language.That would certainly be a time-travel experience for me.But, there's so many 'living' people in the world I want to communicate with.I prefer devoting time to that.But I can definitely see the attraction to dead language pursuits.
Hey, I've got a good insult for when a pretentious intellectual thinks he's better than you just because he speaks Latin - "Linguistic necrophile!".

Originally Posted by scotcher

[sticks out tongue at VM]

[hacks off tip of scotcher's tongue with machete]

I studied Latin in the university for 1 year. It was obligatory. I don't think it is so rare because a lot of people study it. Some other people studied Greek. In our department we studied also Gothic, Old English and Middle English, for 1 term each, but not very hard, just for getting the whole picture. Then I tried to learn a little bit of Sanskrit as an optional subject, but gave up after 5-6 months of inconstant studies. Then 10 or so lessons of Irish, also optional. Now I'm trying to learn Chinese by myself with 4-5 month interval after each "session" (during which I forget almost everything), but considering the number of Chinese people in the world I doubt it can be called "rare" or "exotic".

BTW, brett, your habit of not making a space after stops and commas makes me dizzy.

When I went to school, in Australia, most schools offered French and Latin only.

I went to what was considered to be a more progressive school. It offerred Latin, French, German and Indonesian. My brother and sister learned Indonesian while I studied German. My first attempt at a language was however, Esperanto. I am currently trying to decide if I should next set a course to brush up on my German or start with Spanish or wait untill my Russian is fluent before doing either.

I am currently learning Mandarin Chinese.

Where is Esperanto spoken?

On the internet, mainly, by practitioners of applied futility.

Originally Posted by Евгения Белякова

Where is Esperanto spoken?

As far as I know it is not spoken anywhere, maybe on the internet as Pravit says , I don't know. Someone in China the other, day made a post here claiming that it is taught in several universities there.
Esperanto was someones bright idea of uniting the world with a common language. It is totally made up, a plastic language.

And it is highly Eurocentric. Not surprising, considering it was invented by some Pole in the 19th century. A poor choice for an international auxiliary language, IMO, if you even wanted to have one.

Being a dead language doesn't mean no one uses it necessary, but rather that it is no longer evolving. With English, for example, we are always making up new words to fit advances in the culture. Even the way we say the words changes over time. However, even though I know full well Latin is spoken in "churchy" places, you don't see people making up new Latin words.

Competence problems (I'm learning to 'quote' properly)

same deal.
(but don't worry, Waxwing and DenisM set me straight, so the next one is fine)

Originally Posted by Propp

Then 10 years of Irish, also optional.

I've considered Scottish, as it's my maternal ancestry. I only realized a couple years ago that my grandma's mother tongue was Scots-Gaelic, and that she'd only learnt English at age 30yrs. I always put my inability to comprehend her down to the fact that she was, well... Scottish. And old people losing their teeth never helps.

Originally Posted by Propp

BTW, brett, your habit of not making space after stops and commas makes me dizzy.

Yeah, it'll be less cluttered if I heed that advice. I have a habit of making people dizzy. Before you, my mongrelization of French/English sent Pravit to the optomitrists.

DDT, I'd thought of learning Australia's Aboriginal greeting phrases, but two reasons stopped that idea. 1- No two regions speak the same language. I don;t think they're even dialects. 2- City Aboriginals have been forced from their roots for so long, that George W. Bush is more likely to speak their language than they themselves are.

Regarding Esperanto...

Originally Posted by Pravit

..is highly Eurocentric. A poor choice for an international auxiliary language, IMO, if you even want to have one.

This is what has not impressed me about Esperanto. It needs to be at an equal difficulty level (as much as possible) for diverse linguistic groups. But, it's a start anyway. Maybe at the inventor's time, it was more difficult to establish a knowledge of non-Western languages.

If I was going to answer my own poll (honestly, I mean. As opposed to my evasive answer), I'd have answered "yes". Making my own alphabet would be pointless if was was only going to learn a couple of related languages. But, because I learn the basic phrases of all languages (as is my intention, anyhow) with sounds that which romanization cannot account for, making my own system became very helpful. I have a card box. My first few cards are 'phonetic keys', which have about 40 letters (so far). And, each new language symbol I come across for a sound, gets considered as my representation to replace my latin-based interim symbols. So, I'll use Arabic letters etc. And the rest of the cards have a sticker of the country's flag, and lists phrases with my phonetics. It takes dedication to put it together, yes. (Which is why it's still spotty and dis-organized). But, when I forget how to say "yes" in a language, going to my cards is easier than rewinding and forwarding through cassette tapes for the right pronunciation.
But, I though those phonetics symbols next to word in dictionaries were universal. But, I asked at an extensive language book-store for a cassette and booklet for it, and they hadn't heard of such a phonetic system encompassing 'all' languages. Is there such a system? I thought it was called "International Phonetic Alphabet".

Originally Posted by Evgenya

Where is Esperanto spoken?

As a couple others have said, Esperanto is not native to anywhere.Some guy had an idea to have a language that 'the whole world' could understand. It didn't catch on. According to someone on this forum, Hungary has a strong adoption of it in high-schools, or university. But, it has no home, even though it was a Pole who created it.(According to Mr. Pra 'Know-it-all' Vit, anyway) :P

This is what has not impressed me about Esperanto. It needs to be at an equal difficulty level (as much as possible) for diverse linguistic groups. But, it's a start anyway. Maybe at the inventor's time, it was more difficult to establish a knowledge of non-Western languages.

The thing is that it resembles European languages in its vocabulary and structure. And it was created by only one guy. Plus, its grammar doesn't seem to be as simple as you might think, have you seen that article "Why Not to Learn Esperanto?"(although maybe the guy who wrote that is just an incompetent Esperantist, I don't know). If we were to do such a thing nowadays, I'd say get linguists from around the world into a big committee and have them argue for years while they created a new auxiliary language. Until they realize it's pointless and give up.

Originally Posted by nightfaerie

Being a dead language doesn't mean no one uses it necessary, but rather that it is no longer evolving. With English, for example, we are always making up new words to fit advances in the culture. Even the way we say the words changes over time. However, even though I know full well Latin is spoken in "churchy" places, you don't see people making up new Latin words.

Once I saw a German-English-Latin phrase book printed in 1900 or so. There were phrases like "When does this train arrive at the station" and "where did you buy your new whatch". As far as I remember "a whatch" was "horlogium".
brett, it was "10 lessons", not years.
International Phonetic Alphabet does exist, but not all dictionaries stick to it, especially american ones. For some incomprehensible reason the editors of these dictionaries think that fine [fIn] is more easy to grasp than fine [fain].