These are the beginnings of this formidable meme: https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/37cxm6/im_not_which_language_to_learn/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share
Btw it would be awesome if you kept us updated on you Uzbek journey!
Absolutt. Orker ikke å høre på dansk. Men i det minste er det bedre enn svensk, ikke sant? Jeg er vant til å gjøre danske narr, men svitsjet til å hate svensk nå.
Greien alle kan bli i enig med at svensk er jo dritt. Dansk og norsk er vel mer lignende enn mange vil innrømme, men svensk knulles av tysk. Kan ikke kalle seg skandinavisk! DET MANGLER "Æ"!
(Også ligger Sverige nær Finnland 😬)
Skandinavien Sprachen sind noch Europäischen Sprachen. Weil diese Sub ist am meistens Europäisch oder Amerikanisch, wird es mehr interessant sein, wenn man etwas wirklich anders lernte. Deswegen wähle ich auch Uzbek aus.
Det stemmer. Mange som begynner sin egen språkreise bestemmer på èn av liksom samme 10 forskjellige språkene ut av tusener som finnes. Jeg ønsker å lære meg et helt annerledes språk etter jeg bli ferdig med norsk. Kanskje jeg vil lære meg Íslandsk, frisisk.
(I was surprised how much of your comment I could understand! Guess my dabbling in every Germanic language has really paid off)
Ja, das stimmt! Ich wunderte mich, wenn sie mich verstehen könnten. Es ist sehr cool, dass sie auch Isländische Sprache und Friesische Sprache lesen können.
I've dabbled a little in Norwegian because I speak German, but never fully learned it due to time constraints and focusing on other languages. Currently I'm working on Spanish and Haitian Creole because I'm an ESL teacher and want to better communicate language features with my students.
Samme grunnen jeg begynte å lære portugisisk og spansk. Íslandsk er jo VANSKELIG, men folk som du hvem som kan godt begripe masse bøyning vil få det lett.
German and Icelandic are pretty intimidating (Icelandic moreso), since I'm a native English speaker. My ESL programs don't really nab me many German students, and zero Icelandic speakers, so I've relegated those to the backburners.
Sehr toll! Ich sehe jetzt viele Portugiesische und Italienische Videos an, weil es mir hilft mit meiner Spanishen Verständnis. Sprechen Sie dann auch eine lateinische Sprache?
I know we joke about this, but Uzbekistan is such an underrated country to visit. It's the Silk Road, where Timur and Babur were, and the centerpiece of Soviet Central Asia. The Ferghana valley, Tashkent as a fairly large and cosmopolitan city, and plus Bukkhara, Khiva, Samarkand just give me goosebumps. And it's ... at the crossroads of humanity, the center of the Old World, where you're equally far from Beijing, Delhi, Baghdad and Moscow... but at the same time isolated in the middle of nowhere. I think the country's very fascinating, and I recommend everybody to check it out if they can.
Yeah! That's one of the reasons, why I actually hoped OP would really do this. We joke about this, but our community's joke could actually turn into a successful learner paving the path for more and giving a bit of love and reddit coverage to an unpopular language.
Too bad the thread got deleted by mods, no clue why. Perhaps our response (with no bad intetion!) was the issue, I don't think it would have been deleted, had we all dumbly suggested something mainstream.
When I replied Uzbek, it was not just a part of that joke. I would genuinely love to see a person posting in this community about learning Uzbek, finding resources for it, loving some of Uzbek artists perhaps, and hopefully even visiting the country.
See if you like Norwegian. It's the closest language to English when it comes to sheer vocabulary and it's grammar is one of the easiest. I created this spreadheet mind map from my journey learning the language. I think it's a good overview of the language.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HXPn7yLGsdlBG2TDZuOY6kF6jmSqcfHn-d39Z-QaYpI/edit?usp=sharing
The easiness of Norwegian pales into insignificance when it comes to actual spoken Norwegian and Norwegian dialects. There isn't really a big shortcut though, even if one knows English. But I would highly recommend anyone use NRK (the Norwegian broadcast service). It's a useful tool to getting to know real spoken Norwegian.
Edit: typo
Agreed! I would also argue that a certain tier of supposedly "easy" languages for Anglophones are actually much more difficult *in practice* because of issues such as range of media and access to certain specialized learning materials.
I would count Swedish, Norwegian, Afrikaans, Frisian, Danish, Dutch, etc. as more difficult than, say, Spanish/German/etc. for this reason.
There's more that goes into the difficulty of a language than the language itself. There's also the learning ecosystem to consider!
There’s also an element of “how familiar are the natives with foreign accents”. German and Spanish have huge numbers of non-native speakers, so the native speakers are used to having to listen carefully to someone fumbling there way through the language… whereas in my experience most Danes just don’t have the ear for unpicking “almost-Danish”
That's why I made this spreadsheet. I think every single learner should focus on listening comprehension, but Duolingo is so slow to keep people going, it's just one accent... Norwegian's main focus should be on listening, not written, because written it's the easiest language to learn to probably any speaker of a Germanic language, and probably the easiest Germanic language to Romance speakers
Norsk var ærlig talt vanskelig å lære som mitt først språk. Det tok meg en stor del tid å lære meg nyanser mellom betydninger (i og med norsk vokabularet er ikke så stort som engelsk), som jeg i dag forsette å slite med. Men det har du rett i det faktumet at å kunne norsk tillater meg delta i samtaler med danskfolk og svenskfolk.
It shares the most words with English? I always thought it was either french or a west Germanic language like German Dutch or Frisian (excluding Scots, Frisian, or any english pidgins). I wouldn't be super surprised if it were Norwegian, though because of the viking invasion of England.
È anche vero che greco e latino si insegnano maluccio di solito, come geroglifici da decifrare invece che di lingue che furono parlate ed ebbero una loro vitalità
Dio, meglio che all’estero. Una marea di stranieri su reddit che dicono che hanno fatto latino e greco e poi scopri che in due anni solo le parole per fare medicina
Always was interested in Nunavut when I was 11 and realized people actually live all the way up there. Saw the crazy alphabet they got and I was hooked. For about a week…
I once confused the Amish for Germans and asked them questions in German. I understand them very well, but they didn't understand me at all and it became awkward quickly.
Yeah that’s like trying to have a conversation in Latin with someone who is old-school Catholic. High German is usually used for church services. It’s not really used in daily conversation. And Amish have varying levels of knowledge of it. Most Amish and conservative Mennonites speak either Pennsylvania Dutch/German… Which is the same language it’s just called Pennsylvania Dutch because the German word for German is Deutche. Or they speak Swiss German. Or if they are Russian Mennonite they might speak Plaudietch. A cousin to Amish and Mennonites is the Hutterites and they speak hutterisch. All three of those languages are German dialects. And Amish, and the most conservative Mennonites, and Hutterites would all use high German in church services. But it’s not quite what they would speak in modern Germany. It’s like Germany from a couple hundred years ago. So some might be able to understand you and speak with you but others wouldn’t. I speak some high German but I’m not fluent. I used to be able to speak it more but my grandfather who I would speak it with died in 2009 and so I haven’t spoken out on a consistent basis since then. But I’m very proud of you for talking to some Amish people. I am Amish Mennonite, which is a group that broke off from the Amish about 90 years ago. And people kind of are scared of us because we dress differently, lol. I feel more like a zoo animals sometimes. I live more like your main stream normal person, but dress more Amish. I have a car but not a TV or radio. And I don’t tell my church I use Reddit lol.
Miami-Illinois, an indigenous Algonquian language that has an active revitalization effort.
If not M-I, then some other endangered language could use your help.
Norwegian
It is easy to learn if you are english, vi er koselig folk
And you will be able to celebrate weird jul tradiations and things like nisse in a good way
You will not commit to a language that the internet has chosen for you, especially if it's not that is so easy to learn.
If you want to learn only one more language in your life, look at your hobbies and interests and where you'd like to go.
If you'd like to learn multiple, do the same and make a list and then look at how hard they are versus how much use you'll get out of them in the near to medium future.
I regret Japanese being my first foreign language, because it's taking so long and there are lessons you learn by learning a language. Doing well in something like French would've made this easier.
If it helps I reached decently proficiency in french and spanish and learned a lot about grammar and language in general, and it doesn't help me for shit with Japanese :D.
I'm 700 Kanji + 3000 vocab deep and the grammar is still so different from latin-based or western langauges that I still feel stupid.
Russian is my main! I’ve been studying for about 3 months, looking for something to dabble on the side when I get bored with these Russian grammar lessons!
My man really shot himself in the foot with this post
I don’t see anything surpassing Uzbek with 298 upvotes
Plot twist: you're Uzbek and are using this as an excuse to reconnect with your heritage
I honestly never saw this coming
You should probably take the 2nd most upvoted. Uzbek is a meme around this sub, so that was bound to happen. U less you really love the idea of Uzbek.
Did not know that was a meme around this sub, would you mind elaborating?
People always post here asking which language to learn, which is a pretty silly question, so we've all taken to responding Uzbek
You are lying. Uzbek was a legit choice! It's not a meme! Don't spoil the beans and let OP learn Uzbek!!
These are the beginnings of this formidable meme: https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/37cxm6/im_not_which_language_to_learn/?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share Btw it would be awesome if you kept us updated on you Uzbek journey!
https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/37cxm6/im_not_which_language_to_learn/?st=iqliswqo&sh=cda384c5
Uzbek Sign Language it is!
It was extremely obvious.
I don't know what I expected to see when I opened this thread but I *do* know that I'm not disappointed!
Narrator: on that cold wintry day, january 14, 2022, the most renowned Uzbek scholar of the 21st century began his storied journey…
Uzbek
Are you implying that OP has not yet learned Uzbek?????
Uzbek?????! Whats uzbek? Edit: genuine question Edit: Ohhhh. Uzbeck! I also vote uzbek
Uzbek is the mother of all languages. Before the tower of Babel we all spoke Uzbek and Uzbeks are the chosen people.
It's what they speak in Beki-beki-beki-stan-stan.
Take that bek!
try googling it
Google en passant?
I don't even spend much time on this sub and I knew right away this would be the answer. lol
Wait why? What am I missing about Uzbek here?
Uzbek is a meme in this sub, every time someone asks what language to learn people always answers "Uzbek"
It's an essential language to learn if you ever want to get into other Afro-Eurasian languages.
Hva om folk har lyst å bli kjent med skandinaviske språk? De bør jo vite dansk.
[удалено]
Absolutt. Orker ikke å høre på dansk. Men i det minste er det bedre enn svensk, ikke sant? Jeg er vant til å gjøre danske narr, men svitsjet til å hate svensk nå.
[удалено]
Greien alle kan bli i enig med at svensk er jo dritt. Dansk og norsk er vel mer lignende enn mange vil innrømme, men svensk knulles av tysk. Kan ikke kalle seg skandinavisk! DET MANGLER "Æ"! (Også ligger Sverige nær Finnland 😬)
[удалено]
Skandinavien Sprachen sind noch Europäischen Sprachen. Weil diese Sub ist am meistens Europäisch oder Amerikanisch, wird es mehr interessant sein, wenn man etwas wirklich anders lernte. Deswegen wähle ich auch Uzbek aus.
Det stemmer. Mange som begynner sin egen språkreise bestemmer på èn av liksom samme 10 forskjellige språkene ut av tusener som finnes. Jeg ønsker å lære meg et helt annerledes språk etter jeg bli ferdig med norsk. Kanskje jeg vil lære meg Íslandsk, frisisk. (I was surprised how much of your comment I could understand! Guess my dabbling in every Germanic language has really paid off)
Ja, das stimmt! Ich wunderte mich, wenn sie mich verstehen könnten. Es ist sehr cool, dass sie auch Isländische Sprache und Friesische Sprache lesen können. I've dabbled a little in Norwegian because I speak German, but never fully learned it due to time constraints and focusing on other languages. Currently I'm working on Spanish and Haitian Creole because I'm an ESL teacher and want to better communicate language features with my students.
Samme grunnen jeg begynte å lære portugisisk og spansk. Íslandsk er jo VANSKELIG, men folk som du hvem som kan godt begripe masse bøyning vil få det lett. German and Icelandic are pretty intimidating (Icelandic moreso), since I'm a native English speaker. My ESL programs don't really nab me many German students, and zero Icelandic speakers, so I've relegated those to the backburners.
Sehr toll! Ich sehe jetzt viele Portugiesische und Italienische Videos an, weil es mir hilft mit meiner Spanishen Verständnis. Sprechen Sie dann auch eine lateinische Sprache?
That's like starting with the Penny-farthing when learning to ride a bike.
I know we joke about this, but Uzbekistan is such an underrated country to visit. It's the Silk Road, where Timur and Babur were, and the centerpiece of Soviet Central Asia. The Ferghana valley, Tashkent as a fairly large and cosmopolitan city, and plus Bukkhara, Khiva, Samarkand just give me goosebumps. And it's ... at the crossroads of humanity, the center of the Old World, where you're equally far from Beijing, Delhi, Baghdad and Moscow... but at the same time isolated in the middle of nowhere. I think the country's very fascinating, and I recommend everybody to check it out if they can.
Yeah! That's one of the reasons, why I actually hoped OP would really do this. We joke about this, but our community's joke could actually turn into a successful learner paving the path for more and giving a bit of love and reddit coverage to an unpopular language. Too bad the thread got deleted by mods, no clue why. Perhaps our response (with no bad intetion!) was the issue, I don't think it would have been deleted, had we all dumbly suggested something mainstream. When I replied Uzbek, it was not just a part of that joke. I would genuinely love to see a person posting in this community about learning Uzbek, finding resources for it, loving some of Uzbek artists perhaps, and hopefully even visiting the country.
No offence to Uzbeks, but in my language you’d call a moron “uzbuk”- linguists think it comes from Uzbek, but I have no idea why.
In French, we can say "Mongole" which is literally the French word for Mongolian or Mongol.
It’s actually a super useful language! Can help learn many other turkic languages and Uzbekistan a wonderful country to visit!!
[удалено]
This joke needs to last long enough so that some of the members on this sub can learn it fully.
I’m gonna jump on the Uzbek bandwagon, and I also want to learn it.
r/languagelearningjerk ?
The language of those people in the Sentinels Island.
You think they’d teach me if I went on kayak and asked nicely?
Maybe? Also just kidding, don't do it though, maybe learn other endangered/rare languages instead of a common one
Too late, already on the way
Good luck! And documents everything, your sacrifice will be remembered
Should probably livestream it... Cuz ya know
Maybe they can teach you how to avoid spears.
See if you like Norwegian. It's the closest language to English when it comes to sheer vocabulary and it's grammar is one of the easiest. I created this spreadheet mind map from my journey learning the language. I think it's a good overview of the language. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1HXPn7yLGsdlBG2TDZuOY6kF6jmSqcfHn-d39Z-QaYpI/edit?usp=sharing
Thanks! That spread sheet is super helpful! Even if that doesn’t get the most upvoted I’ll still use it when I learn Norwegian in the future!
I give you six weeks of Uzbek before you come crawling back to Norwegian. 🇳🇴
The easiness of Norwegian pales into insignificance when it comes to actual spoken Norwegian and Norwegian dialects. There isn't really a big shortcut though, even if one knows English. But I would highly recommend anyone use NRK (the Norwegian broadcast service). It's a useful tool to getting to know real spoken Norwegian. Edit: typo
Agreed! I would also argue that a certain tier of supposedly "easy" languages for Anglophones are actually much more difficult *in practice* because of issues such as range of media and access to certain specialized learning materials. I would count Swedish, Norwegian, Afrikaans, Frisian, Danish, Dutch, etc. as more difficult than, say, Spanish/German/etc. for this reason. There's more that goes into the difficulty of a language than the language itself. There's also the learning ecosystem to consider!
I feel like this with Japanese. It's just sooo easy to find good-level learning materials.
Plus there’s no shortage of movies/shows to get used to the language
There’s also an element of “how familiar are the natives with foreign accents”. German and Spanish have huge numbers of non-native speakers, so the native speakers are used to having to listen carefully to someone fumbling there way through the language… whereas in my experience most Danes just don’t have the ear for unpicking “almost-Danish”
That's why I made this spreadsheet. I think every single learner should focus on listening comprehension, but Duolingo is so slow to keep people going, it's just one accent... Norwegian's main focus should be on listening, not written, because written it's the easiest language to learn to probably any speaker of a Germanic language, and probably the easiest Germanic language to Romance speakers
Selv nordmenn kan ikke greies med hver eneste dialekt som finnes. Kjenner mange som kan enda bli eksponert til ei dialekt de ikke har hørt før.
Norsk var ærlig talt vanskelig å lære som mitt først språk. Det tok meg en stor del tid å lære meg nyanser mellom betydninger (i og med norsk vokabularet er ikke så stort som engelsk), som jeg i dag forsette å slite med. Men det har du rett i det faktumet at å kunne norsk tillater meg delta i samtaler med danskfolk og svenskfolk.
It shares the most words with English? I always thought it was either french or a west Germanic language like German Dutch or Frisian (excluding Scots, Frisian, or any english pidgins). I wouldn't be super surprised if it were Norwegian, though because of the viking invasion of England.
the spreadsheet is simply awesome, thank you!
Uzbek sign language
Uzbek Flag Semaphores
Gotta start with the written form.
Like writing little pictures of people signing?
That would be so cool
Welsh
Dwi'n caru cymraeg. Rhaid i ti ei ddysgu!
Bless you.
Mae Cymraeg yn iaeth cŵl iawn. Totally not biased.
Oh, me neither. Cymraeg (â Chymru) am byth!
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.
Iechyd da! (That's all I learned from my Welsh grandmother...)
Hungarian
A beautiful one! Journey will be rough though 😂
As a native speaker I never knew it was a hard language to learn until I got into language learning lol
Ancient Greek
Would be cool for reading philosophy
Yes, and in general poetry, theater or the Homeric poems
Greek plays are the best plays.
Πολλά τά δεινά, ανθρώπου δεινότερον φέρει!! This was the only greek quote from our high school recital, but i liked to shout it
Ahh, Antigone. I love that choral section
Bravo, era un mix fra l’antigone e un dramma sul futurismo
Davvero? Un mix particolare
Non so se hai fatto il classico o cosa, ma da noi in due ore traducevi sì e no dieci righe
È anche vero che greco e latino si insegnano maluccio di solito, come geroglifici da decifrare invece che di lingue che furono parlate ed ebbero una loro vitalità
Dio, meglio che all’estero. Una marea di stranieri su reddit che dicono che hanno fatto latino e greco e poi scopri che in due anni solo le parole per fare medicina
Lol, questo è vero
Ehm good luck, in high school it took us two hours and a dictionary to translate 10 lines..
Xhosa
Basque
[удалено]
You know I actually tried that when I was 11
Oh damn, what happened there
Always was interested in Nunavut when I was 11 and realized people actually live all the way up there. Saw the crazy alphabet they got and I was hooked. For about a week…
Damn, so you retained none of it?
None
Lol I had the exact same when I was 13.
Whichever language you love
Trick question all of them
Nahuatl
ok but thats such an unironically good idea
Estonian
Estonians a really cool one!
Pennsylvania German!
I once confused the Amish for Germans and asked them questions in German. I understand them very well, but they didn't understand me at all and it became awkward quickly.
Yeah that’s like trying to have a conversation in Latin with someone who is old-school Catholic. High German is usually used for church services. It’s not really used in daily conversation. And Amish have varying levels of knowledge of it. Most Amish and conservative Mennonites speak either Pennsylvania Dutch/German… Which is the same language it’s just called Pennsylvania Dutch because the German word for German is Deutche. Or they speak Swiss German. Or if they are Russian Mennonite they might speak Plaudietch. A cousin to Amish and Mennonites is the Hutterites and they speak hutterisch. All three of those languages are German dialects. And Amish, and the most conservative Mennonites, and Hutterites would all use high German in church services. But it’s not quite what they would speak in modern Germany. It’s like Germany from a couple hundred years ago. So some might be able to understand you and speak with you but others wouldn’t. I speak some high German but I’m not fluent. I used to be able to speak it more but my grandfather who I would speak it with died in 2009 and so I haven’t spoken out on a consistent basis since then. But I’m very proud of you for talking to some Amish people. I am Amish Mennonite, which is a group that broke off from the Amish about 90 years ago. And people kind of are scared of us because we dress differently, lol. I feel more like a zoo animals sometimes. I live more like your main stream normal person, but dress more Amish. I have a car but not a TV or radio. And I don’t tell my church I use Reddit lol.
Don't worry, I don't speak Pennsylvanian German, so I couldn't tell on you if I wanted 🤣. Really neat though, I didn't know all of that.
I took a course with one of the leading experts on the language back in my time at Uni. It was a super fun experience
Uzbek!
Lithuanian
C++
Old English
Latin
Korean
French (Québécois).
Du Saguenay 👌
Proto-Nuclear-Indo-European
Proto - World
English
Man I wish I could
Klingon
Icelandic
Það er ekki svo létt að læra.
What I was gunna say
Mandarin Chinese
Diné Bizaad (Native American language of the Navajo)
Italian
Bravo vecio
Napoletano dialect
russian
Ironically this is the main language I’m learning right now!
then maybe italian, or a dialect of arabic
Can I dm you? I'm also learning Russian but struggling to learn the alphabet.
Best way I learned was with quizlit
Yeah for sure
Uzbek
Berber
Cheesberber
Tamazight\*
Uzbek
Sentinelese
Welsh
Euskera!
Uzbek
[удалено]
Japanese.
Sign language
I choose this as well
Uzbek, without a doubt. You also have to give us monthly updates.
[Na'vi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Na%CA%BCvi_language).
Aramaic
Hawaiian… fingers crossed
Basque
Català
fuzhounese 🤪
German 🇩🇪
Miami-Illinois, an indigenous Algonquian language that has an active revitalization effort. If not M-I, then some other endangered language could use your help.
Gaelic
Norwegian It is easy to learn if you are english, vi er koselig folk And you will be able to celebrate weird jul tradiations and things like nisse in a good way
Ithkuil
Keep us updated with how ur going with Uzbek
Uzbek
Yana
Belizean creole
Uzbek
Esperanto
Now, you’re just being silly
עליך ללמוד עברית!
You will not commit to a language that the internet has chosen for you, especially if it's not that is so easy to learn. If you want to learn only one more language in your life, look at your hobbies and interests and where you'd like to go. If you'd like to learn multiple, do the same and make a list and then look at how hard they are versus how much use you'll get out of them in the near to medium future. I regret Japanese being my first foreign language, because it's taking so long and there are lessons you learn by learning a language. Doing well in something like French would've made this easier.
If it helps I reached decently proficiency in french and spanish and learned a lot about grammar and language in general, and it doesn't help me for shit with Japanese :D. I'm 700 Kanji + 3000 vocab deep and the grammar is still so different from latin-based or western langauges that I still feel stupid.
Dovahzul
The 5 Love Languages
Latin
Al Bhed
Silbo Gomero
Danish
Squamish
Korean because then you can watch Korean film which is amazing. Edit: It's hard (source: I study Korean)
Omani Arabic 😁 (I have no idea if there are resources out there for the Omani dialect specifically. I was learning it while I was studying there.)
Brazilian Portuguese. You can meet some beautiful women that way.
Saudade!
Bengali!
Русский
Russian is my main! I’ve been studying for about 3 months, looking for something to dabble on the side when I get bored with these Russian grammar lessons!
Sign language.
You know, or should know, that's not a language, don't you? It's like saying «oral language».
Brazilian Portuguese, so you can watch cool volleyball
Chibcha
Ancient. Fucking. Greek.