Less commonly-spoken (and less commonly-studied) languages

Nice! Yes, Armenian is definitely a much more straightforward language for me as it’s indo-European. In fact I would say it’s probably the easiest language I’ve studied so far (definitely easier than Russian for example). Georgian I find interesting but the verbal system is very tricky. Both have their own beautiful alphabets :slight_smile:

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Hello NIcky, I’m glad you’re here at the conference :slight_smile:

Is tomorrow too soon? I’m available either day at that time! :slight_smile: I look forward to it!

OK, your 10/20 at 5 PM would be great to have a Zoom meetup for Balinese in the Multilingual World room - see you then!

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Hi Andy, I’m not actually there as I realised it clashes with Sorani course. In fact it doesn’t now as first lesson postponed because of a death in The family. So we start tomorrow

So if anyone’s interested, I’ll be presenting two rare and endangered-related languages talks. At 7.30am Montreal, 12.30pm London, 8.30pm Tokyo, I’ll be speaking together with Dick Howeson, the founder of uTalk at the Topic Room (Venus Room). uTalk is committed to preserving and promoting endangered languages and if you are a speaker of a rare language or if you are interested in learning one, do come on over!

At 8pm Montreal. 1pm London and 9pm Tokyo in the same room I’ll be presenting with @Liam a native speaker of Warlpiri, one of the more vibrant languages from Australia’s Northern Territory about his language and his work in language revival.

Hope to see you all later today.
Brian

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Thank you all for this talk. I found it very interesting. Unfortunately i had to pick up the kids from school during the talk so i did miss a part.

Great,

Excuse me, ¿where were you studying Tzotzil?

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Aussi j’ai eu cette question,

Mais je crois, basé sur mon experience, que ça dépends de qui parle, dans chaque pays ou région du monde il’y a langues parlées par minorités, mais chaque groupe va messurer la taille de une autre communauté “basé sur” la taille de son parti et leur identité.

Pour certaines latino-américains le spagnol n’est pas aussi important et grand comme l’anglais, même si notre langue est la deuxième langue maternelle du monde.

*Message for the staff, I flagged myself previously due I missed correcting myself, and so I forgot to tag reply to @Ron too. :joy: :sweat_smile: I’m sorry, I am not one of those millenials who are good for IT.

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Just because there are fewer speakers doesn’t mean it’s an “impractical” language. Due to immigration, in my hometown there are many speakers of minority languages. I want to learn them all, but there are so many of them…

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Hi Aaron- it was back in 2002, I spent some time in Chiapas, mostly in San Cristobal but also a few weeks in small villages near there, including one called Oventik, which had a Zapatista-run school teaching Spanish and basic Tzotzil.

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I’ve learned a little Amharic. I live in Minnesota, so lots of Amharic speakers here.

I’m mostly learning Oromo. A lot of speakers here of that language, too.

Sadly, political tensions of the homeland affect us here, too, so speaking Oromo is not always without problems…

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I am also in Minnesota! Someday I’m planning to learn Somali.

Wow, that’s great that you’re learning the community languages of your area, especially Oromo! It’s rare to find people interested in the Oromo language let alone Amharic! It must be hard finding good learning methods/resources though. How are you finding the learning experience so far?

I found very few options for Amharic learning resources…

I want to learn Cherokee, but I haven’t done much with it yet. If I can learn the syllabary, it would be fairly easy to read it. Understanding it, however, would be a much bigger problem. There are limited resources available. It is being taught in Native American schools in Oklahoma because they are actively trying to revive it, so maybe more resources will be available soon.

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Javanese uses aku a lot for informal conversations.

Very cool! It’s hard to learn Somali–or any of these East African languages–because we’re so used to using literacy as the basis of learning in the West. There is plenty of material for Somali etc, don’t get me wrong, but it’s in the minds of its speakers.

I’m all about learning community languages. It’s a horribly undervalued resource in the US, which we allow to just disappear without appreciating.

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I haven’t looked into it yet. I realize it will be a very different experience from learning Spanish. Literacy and its different values in various cultures is an interesting thing to think about. I can’t wait to see how it goes.

I agree with this so much! After learning a couple other languages, including American Sign Language, I plan on learning Somali, Hmong, and Ojibwe, which are all languages spoken here. I am really interested in being able to connect with people in our community from all different cultures in a way that I couldn’t using English.