Wow.Im so delighted.Im from KURDESTAN and also my mother tongue is KURDISH 
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Which part of Kurdistan? Which dialect of Kurdish? I’ve 9nly been in Bakur, and speak Kurmancî best, but know a little Zazakî and am learning Sorani
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fabulous:blush:
I speak Sorani and its my mother tongue.
I live in East Kurdistan, i mean ROJHELAT.
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I’m learning Amharic, the main lingua franca of Ethiopia. It isn’t a small language in numbers, but it’s not a very popular second language. The resources are quite limited and usually aren’t substantial enough for one to actually become proficient in the language.
I am half Ethiopian/half French Canadian and grew up speaking French and English, but not Amharic.
Anybody else learning Amharic?
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In Balinese, “aku” is seen as literary language and quite inappropriate for speech, so you can still see this in written texts and ritual formulae - but not really in speech anymore.
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It was interesting to look at a language that has largely survived (or more aptly, missed being destroyed by) white settlement, and to see how they are trying to invigorate.
Of great interest to me is how any Linguistic community revives itself - it seems very interwoven with economic factors, which are also an interest of mine. I’d love to get my head around the latter in order to support the former.
As for Georgian grammar, I’m only at the very beginning so yet to encounter that - but I tend to learn by parroting, so hopefully I’ll pick it up ok 
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خۆشهڵم. منلە كورسی زمانی سۆرانی بەسداریم بەڵام هێستا كێم ووشەكان دەزانم و راستنوسنم باش نییە
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The least spoken languages I studied or am interested in studying are African - Wolof, Luganda, Malagasy. All three of them have a particular story of connection through the respective countries (Senegal, Uganda, Madagascar). The most obscure language (which nevertheless has some pretty good resources in Russian) is Buryat, also for personal reasons - it’s my second homeland, I spent my childhood in that area.
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I’ve never studied Buryat, but I visited Ulan Ude about 17 years ago and remember talking with some people there about work being done to maintain/revitalize it, use it in primary schools, etc. It seems like a really interesting language!
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great to remind everyone the definition of a minority language!
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I’ve never tried learning Amharic despite enjoying Ethiopian music since childhood (and hunting down some particular records on CD). I find Semitic languages the hardest to learn for myself. I’m curious to find out how native speakers of Arabic, Amharic and Hebrew find learning each other’s languages because there are so many similarities between them.
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I love Ethiopian music as well! And yes, there are many similarities, but not as much as in the Romance or Slavic language families, I feel.
Have you studied any other Semitic languages or languages in language families different than that of your mother tongue?
I would love to begin learning Balinese! Have you already done a Zoom!?
I haven’t yet - before doing so, I’d strongly suggesting looking at my introductory video first (hosted in the Saturn Theater). If you want to arrange a Zoom meetup after, I’d be happy to do so in the Earth Exchange >> Multilingual Asia room. Be mindful that I work on JST/Japan Standard Time, so I will have to schedule around those times.
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I learnt the Arabic script and passed the Arabic tree on Duolingo before it expanded. Otherwise, all the languages I studied are naturally outside of my mother tongue family. I think they can been seen on our profile pages.
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So, I started off with Russian (not a minority language!) but when studying in Russia I came across Armenian studies in the uni where I was. I did a term’s course, this was way back in 2003, but I’m hoping to go to Armenia next summer - this summer cancelled 
and so want to revive it a bit. I find it pretty straightforward as a language, grammatically…whereas Georgian…:)) I do love Georgian as well, and took some classes in it, have a Georgian friend who sends me little bits to read…but the grammar is so fiendish! I reckon if I just did it full time I would make progress, but that’s not possible.
The other language I’ve done a couple of summer courses in is Turoyo (Surayt) which is an endangered aramaic language. I had done a smattering of Arabic which helped with learning the writing system. You can find resources at www.surayt.com. The difficulty for me is having nobody to practise with!
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Yes! I watched it yesterday, actually! I do plan to watch it again and make some notes and would love to plan to meet up after! I’ll keep the time in mind! I’m in CA, so it’ll definitely take some finagling!
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I’m studying Kurdish (Sorani). It’s not that small a language with about 10 million or more speakers but the resources are really limited.
I decided to make a youtube video listing all the resources available for this language as I was finding it frustrating not having good reliable resources and I also hoped that people would watch it any maybe share some more resources.
Here’s a link to my video if anybody is thinking of learning this language:
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Hi Natashia - yes, your afternoons starting 5 PM PDT would be perfect - and we could work out a time from that reference point. As I work at odd hours during the weekdays, my first available time slot would be 5 PM PDT this Tuesday afternoon (10/20). After that, the next available time would be your Friday afternoon - and for most of the weekend. I hope to hear from you soon!
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@JuliaMP I’m hoping to make it to Georgia and Armenia too, probably spring/summer of 2022. Interesting to hear that the Armenian language is more straight forward. I have just started with Georgian, and the alphabet alone is challenging!