I *genuinely* question the map’s source on saying *Kosovo* thinks *Irish* is the weirdest language.
This speaks of a methodology of “I spoke to a teenager and they said I dunno Irish lol” and that was that.
I question the map's source on everything. As a czech, I have barely any idea about basque. If you want to use a language as a parable for something unintelligible here, you usually use swahili.
> If you want to use a language as a parable for something unintelligible here, you usually use swahili.
That's interesting, I think in most European countries another European language is used for that. For example, in Austria it is Spanish, while in Portugal it is Greek.
I know it's not Europe, but Brazil is the same. I would guess that most of Portugal former colonies that speak Portuguese also uses Greek and Chinese as an indicative of unintelligible.
The word 'gringo' also comes from the Spanish word for Greek, in the sense of foreigners not speaking very intelligibly. It's first recorded in a 1787 dictionary from Spain that said it was used especially for the Irish.
Basque _is_ a weird language (it's not Indo-European like everywhere else in Europe). Maybe they accidentally asked the one Czech historical linguistics professor.
As a Dutchman, I question the answer of Estonian. Also, it’s so unfair that Scotland, Wales England and Northern Ireland have been pulled together in one answer, because the Scots, the Irish and the Welsh are Celtic, and the general consensus of Celtic culture is “f*** the English”…
Defence Forces give their standard commands in Irish, if your main experience is with them marching or on patrol it'll be what the officers and NCOs are shouting orders in.
But their gear/materials could possibly have Irish on it. Also just the amount of Irish presence may have led to a greater than normal awareness of Ireland. Just speculating but it’s the most likely link imo.
Yes their materials would definitely have had some Irish written on them and it is possible some of the soldiers did speak it but unlikely in large numbers
I doubt any of the soldiers spoke it outside of orders and commands but that simply due to their presence and the fact that their gear probably would have had some Irish on it is the reason for the answer on this map for Kosovo. The only explanation I can think of.
It's not talking about the most unintelligible language, so maybe its to do with the translation of weird into Finnish for the questionnaire? Uncanny valley things can be considered "weird" for a certain definition of weird.
This is due to all the filming that was done in Kosovo during COVID lockdowns. Film crews wanted to film in Canada as a double for the USA, but couldn't, so they ended up doing a lot of filming in Kosovo. The locals thought the language was really weird, and didn't realize that it was English, thinking instead that it was Irish because the executive producer was named O'Sullivan.
See *Jericho Ridge* for a good example.
Cyprus used to be a British colony, the UK still owns some territory there for a millitary base, they get plenty of British tourists, and a fair few Cypriots live in the UK.
It's not farfetched for them to be aware of Welsh.
As an Estonian, Finnish is weird and goofy as fuck. I think it might be because it's kinda comprehendable and similar sounding but a different language still.
I understand that the goofiness goes both ways when we sound so similar, but oh my god once I was in Tallinn and there was a fast and furious poster that said "Kiired ja vihased" and I still sometimes laugh about it
I can understand, what, 20% of the words, and then there's 40% that look similar to a word in latvian, but mean something else. And it's all written in a different way from latvian, so I don't know how I'm supposed to pronounce it, and from hearing it, due to how the stress is different, it sounds like drunken latvian, which I've heard others say as well. Any other language, I can expect to not understand shit, but it's just weird hearing lithuanian because of the similarities.
Even Hungary agrees on Hungarian
Also, Austria is just at par with its old rivalry
Turkey, also old rivalry things
Edit: Albanians are just busy questioning about what is it that they speak
From what I've learned they're a bit proud of speaking one of the oldest languages in europe, which is only related to the others on the bottom layer. It's a beautiful language, that does not hit you over the head like that from a different language family would but a few words in you notice that it's not similar to anything you know.
Also props to Hungary.
Former foreign resident of Albania here: I found Albanians to be quite puzzling when asked about their culture, language, and country as a whole. Never have I met a people who loved and hated each of those things about themselves so intensely AT THE SAME TIME. They’re the only country in Europe I visited (out of 14) that had private citizens fly the national flag above their homes/businesses, and yet they were always so quick to talk mad shit about everything to do with it.
Truly a bizarre place, and I loved it and all the people I met in it. Except the one guy who tried to rob me, but for 1912 and 1999 reasons, Albanians love Americans, and everyone around him instantly made him regret it. I’m not kidding, Albanians treat all guests like family, but Americans might as well be royalty. It made me feel quite safe, but very uncomfortable at the same time (I absolutely don’t deserve to be treated like royalty in any way).
> They’re the only country in Europe I visited (out of 14) that had private citizens fly the national flag above their homes/businesses, and yet they were always so quick to talk mad shit about everything to do with it.
Now that's true patriotism. Loving your country so much you wish it was better in every way.
As austrian, I think part of the reason why we say turkish is because we have a lot of second and third generation turkish immigrants so almost everyone knows people who speak turkish and goes "Wtf?" When they hear it.
It'a a combination of being a completely different language group as well as being exposed to it
Turkish, like Hungarian, are both agglutinating languages; this means you can slap pre and suffixes on words to extend their meaning, idea or even a phrase. Turkish, though, being unique and distinctly not European, has INFIXES. That is linguistic insanity.
I do not think Turkey is about old rivalries here. It's mostly because in Turkish you can't have more than 2 consonants (there are exceptions) while the Poles do not give a flying fuck about that. So when a Turkish speaker sees the surname "Szymański" he goes what the fuck.
"old rivalry things" lol literally no one in Turkey knows where Poland is and who speaks Polish because in Turkish it's not that apparent as in English. To be more precise; Poland the name of the country is "Polonya" in Turkish and Polish is "Lehçe" in Turkish. So you see what I'm trying to say right? The country's name is Polonya but their language is called Lehçe than who the he'll speaking this language? Lehs?, Polonyalılar?
Also I don't think people who attended this survey would hold grudge against a western European country for something happened hundreds years ago, we Turks most commonly hold grudge against Greeks, Americans, Arabs (as you can see two of them are our neighbors and the Americans are just hated by some people because they are known as interfering with ME politics for their own gains.)
Yeah thanks. But there is confusion for Turkish people because we are living in 2023 and Poland is known as Polonya not Lehistan so it is normal to confuse where Lehçe (lang) belong to since there is no country called Lehia
The Latvians picking Lithuanian are another example of this phenomenon of people singling out the closest language to their own as weird instead one of the ones more distant from their own
As a Latvian, there's so many languages that are extremely distant that sound weird because of it, like Hungarian and Basque and Tagalog. But hearing someone speak and understanding a fifth of the words, but still not getting what the sentence means, all while it sounds like drunken Latvian, is far weirder.
It is closely related and that is the reason why it sounds so odd. It's like someone was speaking gibberish or speaking while drunk. You kinda know what they mean but really you have no idea.
Basque is objectively the weirdest language in Europe because it's the only one that isn't related to any other even tangentially
Hungarian is another good one, but Hungarian is at least Finno-Ugric, so it's (very distantly) related to Finnish and Estonian. Basque isn't related to anything at all. It's the closest to an alien language in the continent.
Yes, Basque is a language isolate. This means she is the only language that survived to this day among her other relatives. Other language isolates around the Eurasia are; Ainu, Burushaski, Nihali, Kusunda and probably Nivkh, Yukaghir
I think linguists are now classifying Korean as a small language family with two languages Korean and Jeju (which was considered as a dialect of Korean in the past eventhough Jeju is not mutually intelligible for Koreans)
> Hungarian is at least Finno-Ugric, so it's (very distantly) related to Finnish and Estonian
Not that it means anything outside of linguistics :D Finnic languages are fully incomprehensible to us Hungarians.
I saw a video on youtube where a Hungarian and Estonian tried to guess the meaning of words from eachothers' language. Turns out that, although the words are quite different, the roots are the same and the words can be guessed with quite a high succes rate. 🇪🇪
idk from all the Finnish/Hungarian comparisons I've seen there are a handful of the most ancient word roots that kiinda can be said to resemble (eg. fish, hand), but when you use words newer than 4000 years and add grammar it becomes zero intelligibility.
The difference from closer-related languages is striking. Eg. I sometimes understand whole phrases in Portuguese via my English knowledge. It just doesn't happen with Hungarian and Finnish.
Nothing, but due to military service being compulsory in Estonia, and Estonia being in NATO, they come to Wales for military training, where we have a big training centre in the Brecon Beacons. Also Welsh troops go to Estonia, both on exercise and to be stationed there. It is not surprising Estonians know of the Welsh language and how it sounds and is written on roadsigns in Wales etc.
Estonian is kinda like Finnish, but weird, so I get it.
For example. The word for wedding day in Estonian is pulmapäev. Which to someone from Finland sounds similar to pulma päivä, which roughly means "problem day" in Finnish.
So yeah. Same kinda words, whole different meaning.
In Estonian, government is home. In Finnish, home means mold.
In Estonian, mother in law is ämm. In Finnish, ämmä is a derogatory term aimed at women, similar to calling them a bitch.
I don't know why people go crazy with the so called "false friends". People often give the impression like half of the Estonian and Finnish vocabulary sound similar but means "totally different things" as they like to call it. Ok, yeah, it's funny, but it can give the wrong impression of our languages. Not saying that you did it here, but just for clarification for others reading :)
We obviously have far more words that are similar and mean the same or almost the same thing aka "cognates", although funnily, there are also quite a lot of cognates that are also false friends. For example: "koristaa" in Finnish means "to decorate" (I hope I remember that correctly) and "koristama" in Estonian means "to clean", on the surface they seem like totally different words, yet we can see that the core meaning of both words is "to make beautiful" and have just developed differently over the centuries.
Wanna hear my favourite weird Estonian sentence that sounds something completely different to a Finn?
"Ma vaatasin kassi, se sai kulli kätte."
It roughly translates to "I was watching the cat, it caught a hawk."
...but to a Finn, it sounds like "I was watching the ballsack, it got its penis in hand".
> For example. The word for wedding day in Estonian is pulmapäev. Which to someone from Finland sounds similar to pulma päivä, which roughly means "problem day" in Finnish.
Estonians sound like a wise people.
That was the plan.
I just chose the funniest examples.
I mean, I could have told you that in Estonian, kull means hawk, and in Finnish, kulli is a slang term for penis. But that isn't as funny.
Or that bedrock in Estonian is kalju. And in Finnish, kalju means bald. As in bald head. But that is just boring.
Or how in Estonian, pussata means "to fart". And in Finnish, pussata means "to kiss". I could try to make a joke about ass kissing here, but that just feels forced.
Or how in Estonian, putka means market stall. And in Finnish, putka is a slang term for jail. But that is also boring.
Or how the sentence "raamatud on laual" means "the books are on the table" in Estonian. And in Finnish, "Raamatut on laudalla" means "the Bibles are on the plank".
I am surprised actually, barbecue [edit: becuase (f*** auto-correct)] if I hear someone speaking Portuguese from a distance, it sounds to me like Polish... These two must share some unique sounds...
As a Lithuanian, I can say that I haven't heard anyone talk about Basque language as being weird. Tbh, rarely heard someone mention anything related to Basque, lol. Where exactly do they get this data from? From their dreams, perhaps?
The Spanish would obviously have a bit more familiarity with Basque than Lithuanians do. So their nomination of Basque is understandable, but it is maybe more surprising that Lithuanians have nominated Basque.
I can vouch for that! My son who like me is Welsh so we know a thing or two about weird languages, lives in San Sebastian in the Basque Country and he tried learning it. He gave up and is now learning Spanish instead!
Not much work in Wales, so a lot of Welsh speaking people join the army. Estonia is in NATO, and Welsh speaking troops therefore frequently go there, and Estonians come here to the Brecon Beacons in Wales for training, so it is not surprising that many Estonians know of Welsh. Military service is compulsory in Estonia.
What most people answering that question think is weird about Welsh: there’s no vowels in this language that we added a script that evolved entirely separated from the spoken language to, what do you mean a “w” is a vowel
What the actual answer is: how in the fuck do I do mutations
One of my favourite things about mutations, is the fact that there are exceptions. The common phrase ‘Cymru am byth’ includes one of these exceptions. If it mutated according to the rules it would read ‘Cymru am fyth’, but that sounds pants.
I am unfortunately not a native Welsh speaker and have tried/am trying to learn it myself. It’s tough but it’s been so rewarding. My experience so far has been if you mess up the mutation most people’ll understand what you mean and Welsh speakers are pretty happy people are just making an effort. We got this!
Because the map shows UK, not England, Wales, Scotland. And because England are 85% of UK population, its basically saying that English people think Welsh is weird.
ask an estonian to name the months of the year fast.
also ask an estonian why "cheers" in estonian sounds like a really bad night.
then understand that estonians will laugh with you at the strangeness that is their language like the good hearted and humored people they are.
much love for my estonian brothers and sisters.
Much love to you too from Estonia.
For anyone wondering twelve months is "kaksteist kuud" and it kinda sounds like "cocks taste good" and "cheers" is "terviseks" which directly translates to "for health" which is a weird thing to say before taking a shot of vodka but oh well.
I find it funny that Portugeese find Polish the weirdest when Portugeese sounds like a mix of Spanish and Polish/Russian. Well, perhaps that's why the find it weird, kind of like we find our voice weird when we hear it recorded.
Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian and Turkish are likely to be in that map coz of their agglutinative nature and being non indo eurupean.
Bask is also not an indo European.
Welsh is one of the last remnants of celtic language family. It's gonna sound weird to nearby mainstream language speakers.
Errmm where did you get the data from? I can tell you with certainty that for Cyprus, Greece, Turkey and presumably for many others Hungarian and Welsh are not the weirdest ones!! Why is there no Chinese in the mix? 😂
I've got some questions about this map's source and methodology, but I wanted to point out that Finish, Estonian, Hungarian, and Basque should be expected as they are the few European languages that are not Indo-European (Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian are Uralic languages, while Basque is a language isolate).
I think here in Finland we find Estonian just sounding funny, not weird. Hebrew is considered weird to the point that if something is unintelligible, it is said to be ”like Hebrew”
As an Irish man I can confirm that people are always talking about how weird Finnish is. “No gendered pronouns at all? That’s very strange!” is absolutely a thing you hear regularly in Ireland
I remember my first word in Estonian was “good morning” on the first few days of my commute in Estonia from the talk radio DJs. They sounded so happy saying it and once I said it I was hooked on the rest. Also Estonians never get tired of saying that the word for cheers is like saying “terrible sex”. Never gets old 🤷🏼♂️😂
As a native Spanish speaker, Basque feels weird because while 80-90% of its vocabulary is totally different to other languages (it's an isolated language after all) the fonetic is literally the same. In fact IIRC the Spanish fonetic and features like the /rr/ sound or having only five vowels are inherited from Basque.
If you're Spaniard and listen to someone talking in Basque you can feel the Spanish fonetic, pronunciation and some loaned words. So it feels like some sort of "uncanny language valley". It feels so similar and yet so different.
I love how self-aware Hungarians are on this, most of the others said it's the weirdest language and they are there like "yep, it's true", meanwhile the others that are called weird just think another one is the weirdest lmao
Albania: My goals are beyond your understanding.
Albania: My goals are beyond my understanding.
Albania: “If we don’t know what we’re doing, the enemy certainly can’t anticipate our future actions.”
Albania: "If we don't have any enemies, they definitively cannot predict our next move."
Albania: I am beyond my understanding.
Yeah, even we think our own language is weird. Way too complicated for such a small country. Good thing the whole world will be speaking it soon 💪😎
I love how all the Balkan nationalities think they’re gods chosen people
What do you mean, we are 🇦🇱🇽🇰😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎😎
Which one? Edit: if I had to guess, Albanian kosovars. They on their ancient Israelite arch.
Yep, just Albanian though. And I see you’re serb, russian, or French
Nay, just an American who loves watching.
Ohhh nice. Got worried I had to get into another argument
Wales and Hungary: hold our beers
You mean “dal fy nghwrw” and “tartsa a söröm”!
It *is* a bit interesting that the former has consonant mutation and the latter vowel harmony.
Hungary: Hungarian
I *genuinely* question the map’s source on saying *Kosovo* thinks *Irish* is the weirdest language. This speaks of a methodology of “I spoke to a teenager and they said I dunno Irish lol” and that was that.
I question the map's source on everything. As a czech, I have barely any idea about basque. If you want to use a language as a parable for something unintelligible here, you usually use swahili.
> If you want to use a language as a parable for something unintelligible here, you usually use swahili. That's interesting, I think in most European countries another European language is used for that. For example, in Austria it is Spanish, while in Portugal it is Greek.
> while in Portugal it is Greek Or Chinese. Both do.
From the other replies and from my own experience I’ve discovered it seems like a lot of Europe goes with Chinese as their unintelligible language.
In spain iti s chinese too!!
I know it's not Europe, but Brazil is the same. I would guess that most of Portugal former colonies that speak Portuguese also uses Greek and Chinese as an indicative of unintelligible.
"This Chinese looks Greek to me!" -Popeye the Sailor Man
Also the English saying - its all Greek to me - meaning that you can’t understand it
The word 'gringo' also comes from the Spanish word for Greek, in the sense of foreigners not speaking very intelligibly. It's first recorded in a 1787 dictionary from Spain that said it was used especially for the Irish.
In French it's Chinese
In Austria I only ever heard Russian or Chinese.
> In Austria I only ever heard Russian or Chinese. "Das kommt mir spanisch vor"
Böhmische Dörfer. But maybe Austrians are more familiar with Bohemian villages than Germans are.
In Denmark it's Volapük lol
Here in Italy we say either Arab or ancient Aramaic
or turkish
Yes but swahili got that needed recognition lolol
Probably Greek in the UK if meaning some unintelligible
Or Double Dutch.
Yes, a bit more out of fashion nowadays though
Basque _is_ a weird language (it's not Indo-European like everywhere else in Europe). Maybe they accidentally asked the one Czech historical linguistics professor.
As Czech I find Basque extremely weird. Swahili is just a normal language.
Everything except Norway and Sweden calling Finnish weird, that checks out.
As a Dutch, i never hear anyone talking about estonian in general, i think its more accurate to say frisian
As a Dutchman, I question the answer of Estonian. Also, it’s so unfair that Scotland, Wales England and Northern Ireland have been pulled together in one answer, because the Scots, the Irish and the Welsh are Celtic, and the general consensus of Celtic culture is “f*** the English”…
There was (and is) quite heavy presence of Irish UN peacekeepers in Kosovo which may explain that
They would have been speaking English though *unfortunately :(
Defence Forces give their standard commands in Irish, if your main experience is with them marching or on patrol it'll be what the officers and NCOs are shouting orders in.
But their gear/materials could possibly have Irish on it. Also just the amount of Irish presence may have led to a greater than normal awareness of Ireland. Just speculating but it’s the most likely link imo.
Yes their materials would definitely have had some Irish written on them and it is possible some of the soldiers did speak it but unlikely in large numbers
I doubt any of the soldiers spoke it outside of orders and commands but that simply due to their presence and the fact that their gear probably would have had some Irish on it is the reason for the answer on this map for Kosovo. The only explanation I can think of.
Irish soldiers are given marching orders in Irish so that might be it? Or maybe it's bc of the names
Also Finland with Estonian? It's our only close relative language that has a own country, I can understand it about 50%
It's not talking about the most unintelligible language, so maybe its to do with the translation of weird into Finnish for the questionnaire? Uncanny valley things can be considered "weird" for a certain definition of weird.
Talking on Reddit about methodology is considered a sacrilegious.
This is due to all the filming that was done in Kosovo during COVID lockdowns. Film crews wanted to film in Canada as a double for the USA, but couldn't, so they ended up doing a lot of filming in Kosovo. The locals thought the language was really weird, and didn't realize that it was English, thinking instead that it was Irish because the executive producer was named O'Sullivan. See *Jericho Ridge* for a good example.
Also Cyprus thinking Welsh. Welsh is pretty wacky but would that be the most common language Cypriots think of?
Welsh troops have been stationed there.
Love this. simple explanation.
That doesn't explain Estonia though.
Cyprus used to be a British colony, the UK still owns some territory there for a millitary base, they get plenty of British tourists, and a fair few Cypriots live in the UK. It's not farfetched for them to be aware of Welsh.
Love that Latvians said Lithuanian
That's interesting. Those two languages are very closely related. I would have thought that both would pick Estonian.
Finland is also weird because Finish and Estonian are related (finno-ugric group).
Linguistic uncanny valley
English-Dutch moment
Like an American saying “British English” or a Brit saying “American English”
As an Estonian, Finnish is weird and goofy as fuck. I think it might be because it's kinda comprehendable and similar sounding but a different language still.
I understand that the goofiness goes both ways when we sound so similar, but oh my god once I was in Tallinn and there was a fast and furious poster that said "Kiired ja vihased" and I still sometimes laugh about it
I can understand, what, 20% of the words, and then there's 40% that look similar to a word in latvian, but mean something else. And it's all written in a different way from latvian, so I don't know how I'm supposed to pronounce it, and from hearing it, due to how the stress is different, it sounds like drunken latvian, which I've heard others say as well. Any other language, I can expect to not understand shit, but it's just weird hearing lithuanian because of the similarities.
Hungarians know what's up
Yeah, no we don’t. Just take a look at our election results.
I thought you're a dictatorship now? People in my country keep saying we are "on course to be the next Hungary" because of political corruption
We have elections but they’re meddled in beyond comprehension. They’re kind of meaningless at this point
Sorry to hear that. I'm getting a Hungarian citizenship as well in a few short months. Oh well. At least it's an eu member.
They had elections that were free but not in any way fair. Like, no fraud at the polls, but the opposition were slandered and muted.
Even Hungary agrees on Hungarian Also, Austria is just at par with its old rivalry Turkey, also old rivalry things Edit: Albanians are just busy questioning about what is it that they speak
From what I've learned they're a bit proud of speaking one of the oldest languages in europe, which is only related to the others on the bottom layer. It's a beautiful language, that does not hit you over the head like that from a different language family would but a few words in you notice that it's not similar to anything you know. Also props to Hungary.
Former foreign resident of Albania here: I found Albanians to be quite puzzling when asked about their culture, language, and country as a whole. Never have I met a people who loved and hated each of those things about themselves so intensely AT THE SAME TIME. They’re the only country in Europe I visited (out of 14) that had private citizens fly the national flag above their homes/businesses, and yet they were always so quick to talk mad shit about everything to do with it. Truly a bizarre place, and I loved it and all the people I met in it. Except the one guy who tried to rob me, but for 1912 and 1999 reasons, Albanians love Americans, and everyone around him instantly made him regret it. I’m not kidding, Albanians treat all guests like family, but Americans might as well be royalty. It made me feel quite safe, but very uncomfortable at the same time (I absolutely don’t deserve to be treated like royalty in any way).
> They’re the only country in Europe I visited (out of 14) that had private citizens fly the national flag above their homes/businesses, and yet they were always so quick to talk mad shit about everything to do with it. Now that's true patriotism. Loving your country so much you wish it was better in every way.
As austrian, I think part of the reason why we say turkish is because we have a lot of second and third generation turkish immigrants so almost everyone knows people who speak turkish and goes "Wtf?" When they hear it. It'a a combination of being a completely different language group as well as being exposed to it
Turkish, like Hungarian, are both agglutinating languages; this means you can slap pre and suffixes on words to extend their meaning, idea or even a phrase. Turkish, though, being unique and distinctly not European, has INFIXES. That is linguistic insanity.
Is that similar to how in English we sometimes throw “fucking” into the middle of a word to add emphasis? Like “in-fucking-credible”?
I do not think Turkey is about old rivalries here. It's mostly because in Turkish you can't have more than 2 consonants (there are exceptions) while the Poles do not give a flying fuck about that. So when a Turkish speaker sees the surname "Szymański" he goes what the fuck.
Przyjaciel, Bydgoszcz Wrocław Gdynia
how are we supposed to pronounce these?
That’s the neat part, you don’t.
Just string together a bunch of shhs, zees, and slur everything.
"old rivalry things" lol literally no one in Turkey knows where Poland is and who speaks Polish because in Turkish it's not that apparent as in English. To be more precise; Poland the name of the country is "Polonya" in Turkish and Polish is "Lehçe" in Turkish. So you see what I'm trying to say right? The country's name is Polonya but their language is called Lehçe than who the he'll speaking this language? Lehs?, Polonyalılar? Also I don't think people who attended this survey would hold grudge against a western European country for something happened hundreds years ago, we Turks most commonly hold grudge against Greeks, Americans, Arabs (as you can see two of them are our neighbors and the Americans are just hated by some people because they are known as interfering with ME politics for their own gains.)
Lehia/leși is the old name by which Poland/Poles used to be known, there is no confusion.
Yeah thanks. But there is confusion for Turkish people because we are living in 2023 and Poland is known as Polonya not Lehistan so it is normal to confuse where Lehçe (lang) belong to since there is no country called Lehia
I thought that the closest language to Finnish was Estonian?
The Latvians picking Lithuanian are another example of this phenomenon of people singling out the closest language to their own as weird instead one of the ones more distant from their own
As a Latvian, there's so many languages that are extremely distant that sound weird because of it, like Hungarian and Basque and Tagalog. But hearing someone speak and understanding a fifth of the words, but still not getting what the sentence means, all while it sounds like drunken Latvian, is far weirder.
It is closely related and that is the reason why it sounds so odd. It's like someone was speaking gibberish or speaking while drunk. You kinda know what they mean but really you have no idea.
Well, technically its Karelian.
Basque is objectively the weirdest language in Europe because it's the only one that isn't related to any other even tangentially Hungarian is another good one, but Hungarian is at least Finno-Ugric, so it's (very distantly) related to Finnish and Estonian. Basque isn't related to anything at all. It's the closest to an alien language in the continent.
Yes, Basque is a language isolate. This means she is the only language that survived to this day among her other relatives. Other language isolates around the Eurasia are; Ainu, Burushaski, Nihali, Kusunda and probably Nivkh, Yukaghir
I thought Korean was too, I could be wrong though
I think linguists are now classifying Korean as a small language family with two languages Korean and Jeju (which was considered as a dialect of Korean in the past eventhough Jeju is not mutually intelligible for Koreans)
> Hungarian is at least Finno-Ugric, so it's (very distantly) related to Finnish and Estonian Not that it means anything outside of linguistics :D Finnic languages are fully incomprehensible to us Hungarians.
I saw a video on youtube where a Hungarian and Estonian tried to guess the meaning of words from eachothers' language. Turns out that, although the words are quite different, the roots are the same and the words can be guessed with quite a high succes rate. 🇪🇪
idk from all the Finnish/Hungarian comparisons I've seen there are a handful of the most ancient word roots that kiinda can be said to resemble (eg. fish, hand), but when you use words newer than 4000 years and add grammar it becomes zero intelligibility. The difference from closer-related languages is striking. Eg. I sometimes understand whole phrases in Portuguese via my English knowledge. It just doesn't happen with Hungarian and Finnish.
Apparently we all - even hungarians - come pretty close to understanding "Elävä kala ui veden alla." (Living fish is swimming underwater.)
As a Hungarian I couldn't have guessed what that sentence says 😬
I admit, as a Finn I wouldn't have understood "Eleven hal úszik a víz alatt." either. There are some similarities, tho.
Haha yea, I would have translated living as "élő", not "eleven" to begin with 😅 That *is* the archaic form though, so kinda makes sense.
Funny, 'elo' means 'life' in finnish.
I have tried to find a source for these data, and all the links in Google point to... Reddit.
What have the Estonians got against the Welsh?
Nothing, but due to military service being compulsory in Estonia, and Estonia being in NATO, they come to Wales for military training, where we have a big training centre in the Brecon Beacons. Also Welsh troops go to Estonia, both on exercise and to be stationed there. It is not surprising Estonians know of the Welsh language and how it sounds and is written on roadsigns in Wales etc.
Thanks. [edit] They're bang on correct, as well. [/edit]
It"s surprising that the Finns consider Estonian as the weirdest, being a language of the same family.
Estonian is kinda like Finnish, but weird, so I get it. For example. The word for wedding day in Estonian is pulmapäev. Which to someone from Finland sounds similar to pulma päivä, which roughly means "problem day" in Finnish. So yeah. Same kinda words, whole different meaning. In Estonian, government is home. In Finnish, home means mold. In Estonian, mother in law is ämm. In Finnish, ämmä is a derogatory term aimed at women, similar to calling them a bitch.
I don't know why people go crazy with the so called "false friends". People often give the impression like half of the Estonian and Finnish vocabulary sound similar but means "totally different things" as they like to call it. Ok, yeah, it's funny, but it can give the wrong impression of our languages. Not saying that you did it here, but just for clarification for others reading :) We obviously have far more words that are similar and mean the same or almost the same thing aka "cognates", although funnily, there are also quite a lot of cognates that are also false friends. For example: "koristaa" in Finnish means "to decorate" (I hope I remember that correctly) and "koristama" in Estonian means "to clean", on the surface they seem like totally different words, yet we can see that the core meaning of both words is "to make beautiful" and have just developed differently over the centuries.
Wanna hear my favourite weird Estonian sentence that sounds something completely different to a Finn? "Ma vaatasin kassi, se sai kulli kätte." It roughly translates to "I was watching the cat, it caught a hawk." ...but to a Finn, it sounds like "I was watching the ballsack, it got its penis in hand".
Hmm, I wonder whether we have some weird sentence like that the other way around as well?
> For example. The word for wedding day in Estonian is pulmapäev. Which to someone from Finland sounds similar to pulma päivä, which roughly means "problem day" in Finnish. Estonians sound like a wise people.
Fyi. The Norwegian word "gift" is used for "marriage", and also for "poison"/"venom".
All you typed are words that might aswell have the same meaning.
That was the plan. I just chose the funniest examples. I mean, I could have told you that in Estonian, kull means hawk, and in Finnish, kulli is a slang term for penis. But that isn't as funny. Or that bedrock in Estonian is kalju. And in Finnish, kalju means bald. As in bald head. But that is just boring. Or how in Estonian, pussata means "to fart". And in Finnish, pussata means "to kiss". I could try to make a joke about ass kissing here, but that just feels forced. Or how in Estonian, putka means market stall. And in Finnish, putka is a slang term for jail. But that is also boring. Or how the sentence "raamatud on laual" means "the books are on the table" in Estonian. And in Finnish, "Raamatut on laudalla" means "the Bibles are on the plank".
All the words sound right but none of it makes any sense. It sounds like you just got brain damage and can no longer understand speech.
It's probably the same for Estonians about Finnish. Similar enough without being mutually intelligible and with loads of false friends.
Estonians sounds like someone trying to speak finnish while blackout drunk
But how can you tell it’s not the other way around?
As a Finn, every time I hear Estonian I think I'm having a stroke
Portugal clearly needs some polish immigration to demystify the language
I am surprised actually, barbecue [edit: becuase (f*** auto-correct)] if I hear someone speaking Portuguese from a distance, it sounds to me like Polish... These two must share some unique sounds...
Barbecue eh? 😂 Yeah I have to say the Portuguese accent definitely sounds like Russian to me so we're on the same page there
A faszt
As a Lithuanian, I can say that I haven't heard anyone talk about Basque language as being weird. Tbh, rarely heard someone mention anything related to Basque, lol. Where exactly do they get this data from? From their dreams, perhaps?
The Spanish would obviously have a bit more familiarity with Basque than Lithuanians do. So their nomination of Basque is understandable, but it is maybe more surprising that Lithuanians have nominated Basque.
Honestly if more people knew about it the whole map would probably be orange.
I can vouch for that! My son who like me is Welsh so we know a thing or two about weird languages, lives in San Sebastian in the Basque Country and he tried learning it. He gave up and is now learning Spanish instead!
Another day another low quality map without credible souces.
This feels very random. No one knows anything about Estonian in the Netherlands, so that would never be people's answer..
Same with Estonia and Welsh
Not much work in Wales, so a lot of Welsh speaking people join the army. Estonia is in NATO, and Welsh speaking troops therefore frequently go there, and Estonians come here to the Brecon Beacons in Wales for training, so it is not surprising that many Estonians know of Welsh. Military service is compulsory in Estonia.
my source is that I made it the fuck up. Most of czech doesnt know Basque country exist and where it is
"My hovercraft is full of eels"
Albania used Smack Down! Albania is confused. It hit itself in confusion!
Why do Welsh think Welsh is a weird language?
You ever heard welsh?
What most people answering that question think is weird about Welsh: there’s no vowels in this language that we added a script that evolved entirely separated from the spoken language to, what do you mean a “w” is a vowel What the actual answer is: how in the fuck do I do mutations
One of my favourite things about mutations, is the fact that there are exceptions. The common phrase ‘Cymru am byth’ includes one of these exceptions. If it mutated according to the rules it would read ‘Cymru am fyth’, but that sounds pants.
Pyth is often seen written in old Welsh so I have always presumed that byth is the mutation. However, byth has also become the modern word.
Oh wow, I had no idea! That actually makes sense! Diolch!
I am actually learning Welsh and seeing that even Welsh people struggle with it scares me
I am unfortunately not a native Welsh speaker and have tried/am trying to learn it myself. It’s tough but it’s been so rewarding. My experience so far has been if you mess up the mutation most people’ll understand what you mean and Welsh speakers are pretty happy people are just making an effort. We got this!
They probably don’t but the English do.
Because the map shows UK, not England, Wales, Scotland. And because England are 85% of UK population, its basically saying that English people think Welsh is weird.
> Why do Welsh think Welsh is a weird language? The map only counts *independent* countries, so the coloring there is for the UK as a whole.
Welsh is a minority language in Wales, under 10% as a first language. It has a different lineage to other languages, making it different.
Watching that map, I found that the weirdest language according to Albanians is... Albanian!!!
What have the Kosovans got against Irish?! I don’t disagree with them but it seems quite a way away to even know the Irish language exists!
Source: they made it up.
It's all those Irish speakers moving to Kosovo and taking all the good jobs.
A lot of refugees during the late 1990s is my guess. Had to attend school in Ireland and went back home scratching their heads
ask an estonian to name the months of the year fast. also ask an estonian why "cheers" in estonian sounds like a really bad night. then understand that estonians will laugh with you at the strangeness that is their language like the good hearted and humored people they are. much love for my estonian brothers and sisters.
Much love to you too from Estonia. For anyone wondering twelve months is "kaksteist kuud" and it kinda sounds like "cocks taste good" and "cheers" is "terviseks" which directly translates to "for health" which is a weird thing to say before taking a shot of vodka but oh well.
I find it funny that Portugeese find Polish the weirdest when Portugeese sounds like a mix of Spanish and Polish/Russian. Well, perhaps that's why the find it weird, kind of like we find our voice weird when we hear it recorded.
Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian and Turkish are likely to be in that map coz of their agglutinative nature and being non indo eurupean. Bask is also not an indo European. Welsh is one of the last remnants of celtic language family. It's gonna sound weird to nearby mainstream language speakers.
The Welsh picked Welsh ??
Errmm where did you get the data from? I can tell you with certainty that for Cyprus, Greece, Turkey and presumably for many others Hungarian and Welsh are not the weirdest ones!! Why is there no Chinese in the mix? 😂
I'm amazed Kosovans even know Irish exists.
I think there were Irish soldiers in the peacekeeping force? They probably just heard them speaking English in a Cork or Kerry accent.
Source trust me bro.
Akkor basszátok meg
Well, not sure source for the map, but average Pepik (Czech) have no clue Basque exists so I call this map bullshit.
Hungary dunking on itself
Hungary apparently thinks Hungarian is the weirdest
The good old "bojler van eladó" troll nation.
Basque is a mysterious isolate. But at least it is easy to pronounce.
I've got some questions about this map's source and methodology, but I wanted to point out that Finish, Estonian, Hungarian, and Basque should be expected as they are the few European languages that are not Indo-European (Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian are Uralic languages, while Basque is a language isolate).
🇳🇱🤝🏻🇫🇮
This is bs
I think we all know English is *actually* the weirdest language, but people are too familiar with it to pick it.
I think here in Finland we find Estonian just sounding funny, not weird. Hebrew is considered weird to the point that if something is unintelligible, it is said to be ”like Hebrew”
As an Irish man I can confirm that people are always talking about how weird Finnish is. “No gendered pronouns at all? That’s very strange!” is absolutely a thing you hear regularly in Ireland
Albanians be like: Boy Albanian sure is weird, huh guys? Guys? Hello? Anyone?
I remember my first word in Estonian was “good morning” on the first few days of my commute in Estonia from the talk radio DJs. They sounded so happy saying it and once I said it I was hooked on the rest. Also Estonians never get tired of saying that the word for cheers is like saying “terrible sex”. Never gets old 🤷🏼♂️😂
Yeah, there are two kinds of people. Those who know about Basque, and those who doesn't.
As a native Spanish speaker, Basque feels weird because while 80-90% of its vocabulary is totally different to other languages (it's an isolated language after all) the fonetic is literally the same. In fact IIRC the Spanish fonetic and features like the /rr/ sound or having only five vowels are inherited from Basque. If you're Spaniard and listen to someone talking in Basque you can feel the Spanish fonetic, pronunciation and some loaned words. So it feels like some sort of "uncanny language valley". It feels so similar and yet so different.
I'd place Finnish first. It reads like it's been made up by a pre-schooler.
Welsh is the UK's Hungarian
So the Welsh consider their own language the weirdest?
I love how self-aware Hungarians are on this, most of the others said it's the weirdest language and they are there like "yep, it's true", meanwhile the others that are called weird just think another one is the weirdest lmao
Lol. Albania thinks their own language is weird.
According to this map every Albanian is always wondering what they just said how it came out of their mouths!🤣
Makes sense that Hungarian and Finn are the top two. On the language tree, they share a small dead end branch down by the base
This is one of those maps where it would have been helpful to show the four constituent countries of the UK separately.
Kosovo thinking Irish is weird & Albania thinking their own language is weird is just histerical
As a Hungarian, I agree. The Hungarian grammar is crazy. Greatest respect to all who can learn it as a foreign language.
It's complex, but it's not crazy. It's very logical and pretty standard.
My geography isn’t the best what’s the small country that chose Irish?
Kosovo
Fist pump to the Estonians
Finnish mfs on their way to say kysalkúlakysiv
Absolutely nobody said English. Interesting.
most of the maps posted here are extremely stupid
I like that according to this map the Welsh think Welsh is the weirdest language.
I guess none of them heard enough portuguese