Human language is a language used mostly by humans to communicate with each other; these languages are very hard to handle by computers (only quite recently neural network computer programs became able to show true understanding of human language). They are studied by linguists. It is estimated that roughly 5000 human languages exist in the world. Human languages are most commonly natural languages, i.e. ones that evolved naturally over many centuries such as English, Chinese, French or Latin, but there also exist a great number of so called constructed languages (conlangs), i.e. artificially made ones such as Esperanto, Interslavic or Lojban. But all of these are still human languages, different from e.g. computer languages such C or XML. Natural human languages practically always show significant irregularities (exceptions to general rules) while constructed languages typically try to eliminate irregularities as much as possible so as to make them easier to learn, but even a constructed human language is still extremely difficult for a computer to understand.
Human language is a social construct so according to pseudoleftists it's an illusion, doesn't exist, doesn't work and has no significance.
Languages are sadly often what easily divides people into groups and so fuels fascism, specifically nationalism.
It's worthy of reminding ourselves that human languages don't have to be limited to spoken ones, we mustn't forget sign languages, visual languages etc., but in this article we'll be predominantly concerned with the spoken ones and assume them implicitly. Spoken languages are also often tightly connected to their writing systems and scripts, but we should be aware of the fact that a language and the way it is written are also two separate things.
Why are human languages so hard for computers to handle? Well, firstly there are minor annoyances like syntactic ambiguity, irregularities, redundancy, complex rules of grammar -- for example the sentence "I know Bob likes computers, and so does John." can either mean that John knows that Bob likes computers or that both Bob and John like computers. Things like this can be addressed by designing the grammar unambiguously, but analyzing already existing natural languages suffers by this. Furthermore in real life there are countless quirks of playing with language, things like sacrasm, parody, exaggerations, indirect hints, politeness, rhetorical questions, fau pax, memes and references. For example when we think of imperative, we imagine sentences such as "Close the window." -- in real life we'll rather say something like "I'm cold, it wouldn't hurt to close the window.", i.e. something that's semantically an imperative but not syntactically, a dumb computer would deduce here we are stating a fact that closing the window will not hurt anyone; it takes human-like intelligence AND experience in how the real life works and abilities like being able to guess feelings and plans of others to correctly conclude this sentence in fact means "Please close the window." Just try to talk to someone for a while and focus on what the sentences mean literally and what they actually imply. So things revolving around this are pose the first issue, but yet a greater issue dwells in how to actually define meanings of words -- human language is not just "text strings" as it might seem on the first glance, behind the text strings lies a deep understanding of the extremely complex real world. More details of the issues of semantic will be given below.
What is the most LRS human language? This is not settled yet but Esparanto looks pretty cool. English is actually one of the most suckless languages, it's extremely easy and everyone speaks it -- it's not perfect but it is like C in programming, likely the best things we probably have at the moment. As a part of less retarded society we should aim to create a constructed language that will be universally spoken by everyone and which, if at all possible, will solve the issue of the great language curse described below.
Does the language we speak affect the way we think? Related scientific terms here are linguistic relativity, Whorf–Sapir hypothesis and mainly linguistic determinism. In short: humans CAN definitely think and reason without language, so there is a basic level of independence of cognition and language, but the stronger questions (linguistic determinism) may ask whether for example some "corners of thinking" become accessible only through specific languages, and this is suddenly more controversial -- in general the politically correct consensus practically denies this could be the case because the opposite smells of "racism" (people with more primitive languages could have more primitive thought) { Lmao that faggot Tom Scott used a pretty flawed reasoning as a "proof", try to spot it as an exercise. ~drummyfish }, the ultimate truth is however that language can unlock the door of thinking more efficiently about abstract subjects, which is why for example we have invented the whole field of mathematics. Is it possible to solve differential equations and precisely describe the laws of physics without all the fancy mathematical symbols, just with words of plain language of some jungle tribe? Maybe it's not impossible in theory but the probabity of anyone actually doing it makes it impossible in practice. With the efficient language of math it however becomes more than possible, it turns into a routine. Similarly a language that's rich in vocabulary regarding emotions and in grammatical tenses will be able to more efficiently capture these concepts. A programming analogy would be that you can write anything in brainfuck, but to be practically able to write anything more complex you need something like C (and this analogy in itself is not a proof, just painting the concept more clearly). Some then counter argue that this merely makes communication more efficient, that it renders expressing oneself easier, not affecting internal thinking. To this we can answer as much: isn't abstract thinking, however, also a form of communication that requires expressing thoughts? It is a communication with oneself, a dialog with imagined partner who listens and answers to our expressions of complex ideas that can't be silently imagined in terms of direct perceptions of the world but only as an abstract word behind which may lie many years of learning and reading about other abstract concepts. So to summarize: thought is independent of language to some degree (probably covering genetically preprogrammed concepts universally required for survival among other humans in prehistoric times), but beyond, crossing the borders of abstract thought and more recent human inventions, language starts to play a role in how we think and may unlock new possible ways of thinking.
{ The following is a thought dump made without much research, please inform me if you're a linguist or philosopher or something and have something enlightening to say, thank you <3 ~drummyfish }
It's been said that language is the source of all misunderstanding.
And indeed, on one hand human languages are cool when viewed from
cultural or artistic perspective, they allow us to
write poetry, describe feelings and nature around us -- in this way they
can be considered beautiful. However from the
perspective of others, e.g. programmers or historians, human languages are a nightmare. There is unfortunately an
enormous, inherent curse connected to any human
language, both natural or constructed, that comes from its
inevitably fuzzy nature stemming from fuzziness
of real life concepts, it's the problem of
defining semantics of words
and constructs (no, Lojban doesn't solve this).
Syntax (i.e. the rules that say which sentences
are valid and which are not) doesn't pose such a problem, we can quite
easily define what's grammatically correct or not (it's not as hard to
write a program that checks gramatical correctness), it is semantics
(i.e. meanings) that is extremely hard to grasp and inevitably presents
a trench between all living beings -- even in rigorous languages (such
as mathematical notation or programming languages) semantics is a bit
harder to define (quite often still relying on bits of human language),
but while in a programming language we are essentially able to define
quite EXACTLY what each construct means (e.g. a + b returns
the sum of values a and b), in a natural language we
are basically never able to do that, we can only ever form fuzzy
connections between other fuzzy concepts and we can never have anything
fixed.
Due to this fuzziness human languages inevitably change over time in spite of our best effort, any text written a few thousand years ago is nowadays very hard to understand -- not because the old languages aren't spoken anymore, but because the original meanings of specific words, phrases and constructs are distorted by time and lost; when learning an old language we learn what each word meant by reading its translation to some modern word, but the modern word is always more or less different. Even if it's a very simple word such as "fish", our modern word for fish means a slightly different thing than let's say ancient Roman's word for fish because it had slightly different connotations such as potential references to other things: fish for example used to be the symbol of Christianity, nowadays people don't even commonly make this connection. Fishermen were a despised class of workers, to some fish may have signified food and abundance, to others something that "smells bad", to others something or someone who's "slippery". Some words may have referred to some contemporary "meme" that's been long forgotten and if some text makes the reference, we won't understand it. The word "book" for example meant something a bit different 2000 years ago than it means now: back then a book might have been just a relatively short scroll, it was expensive and people didn't read books the same way as we do today, they commonly just read them out loud to others, so "reading a book" and the word "book" itself doesn't conjure the same picture in our heads as it did back then. Or another example showing the difference between languages existing at the same time is this: while the Spanish word "perro" translates to English as "dog", the meanings aren't the same; some English speakers use the word as a synonym for "friend" but in Spanish the word can be used as an insult so shouting "perro" and "dog" in the street may lead to different (possibly completely opposite) images popping up in the heads of those who hear it. Westerners who spend a lot of time in eastern countries will confirm that it is absolutely the case that many eastern spiritual terms and texts are untranslatable to English, or translatable only very, very imprecisely: there are words for concepts that western culture simply lacks and even words that have more or less direct translation may carry different connotations, such as the word "void" which in the east has often a positive connotation, unlike in the west. When you study philosophy, you'll be told to read philosophers in their original language in order to truly understand them. To Buddhists or gnostics it will be immediately evident that the power of language to communicate spiritual knowledge is vastly limited, so much so that they have to spend their entire lives collecting hints from scriptures to merely guide them on their way to discovering the real, pure truth -- this wouldn't be so if such truth could be directly expressed through words of language. Imagine you speak to an isolated bushmen tribe somewhere in Africa and you have to translate the word "vaporwave" or "doomer meme" when they don't have a word for Internet, computer or electricity, they don't know what depression, multimedia or technological addiction is and can't even comprehend the concept of a social network because they have hard time imagining there could exist many more people in the world, being unable to count beyond 10, thinking the world probably ends beyond the horizon -- you may perhaps say "vaporwave" is "funny music" and "doomer meme" is a "sad idea", but you know it's actually a very poor translation. It's not because their language was poorer than yours (in fact many of such languages have been found to be extremely hard to learn), it will just have evolved to express other things, ones you can't understand, complex things about nature, jungle, hunting, hundreds of different plants, what's edible and what's poisonous (in which ways, to whom, with what certainty, in which quantities, under which circumstances, ...), subtle distinctions of many different species of animals, rocks, water, trees, fire, weather and so on. Even within our own culture we struggle to communicate, depressed people have hard time explaining what depression really is to people who never experienced true depression, we use words like "sorrow", "emptiness", "exhaustion", but once again, only as rough approximations to the true, indescribable feeling.
How do you describe a word precisely if you can only describe it with other imprecise words that are changing constantly? No, not even pictures will help -- if you attach the picture of a cat to the word "cat", it's still not clear what it means -- does it stand for the picture of the cat or for the cat that's in the picture, does it stand ONLY for the one cat that's in the picture or all other animals that are similar to the one in the picture? How similar? Is lion a cat? Is a toy cat or cartoon cat a cat? Or does the picture signify that anything with a fur is a cat? If it looks like cat but walks on two legs and speaks, is it still a cat? Now imagine describing a more abstract term such as thought, number or existence. There is no solid ground, even such essential words as "to want" or "to be" have different meanings between languages ("to be" can stand for "to exist", "to be in a place", "to temporarily have some property", "to permanently have some property" etc.). Even dictionaries admit defeat and are happy with having circular definitions because there aren't any foundations to build upon, circular definitions are inevitable, dictionaries just help you connect fuzzy concepts together. All of this extends to tenses, moods, cases and everything else. This can be very well seen e.g. with people interpreting old texts such as the Bible, for example some say Jesus claimed to be the son of God while others reject it, saying that even if he stated the sentence, it actually wasn't meant literally as it was a commonly used phrase that meant something else -- these people will argue about everything and they can comfortably interpret the same text in completely opposite ways. The point is that we just can't know.
{ Just one more of other countless examples I recently encountered: it used to be generally believed that Jesus was crucified so that he was nailed on the cross through his palms, however it was shown this wouldn't work and also other evidence showed people were nailed more in the arms, in a way that would hold the weight of the body but wouldn't hit the artery. The confusion came from translation -- the Greek word for "hand" also includes part of an arm, i.e. the word for hand in Greek is different from the word hand in some other languages. ~drummyfish }
In addition there are ALWAYS great many hidden implicit assumptions that both communicating sides have to share to be able to communicate (and these can only be assured by many years of learning, spent in the same environment) -- for example if I tell someone "Drive to the city and buy food.", in fact I mean something like "Right now walk with your feet to our car, open the door, sit in, take the wheel in your hands, start the car, drive only on the road with your eyes open, ..."; the guy can technically satisfy my order by waiting 10 years, then driving a truck through forests with eyes closed over the whole globe and back. Just as it's impossible to perfectly define all words, it is impossible to explicitly recount all assumptions. Though the mentioned example is exaggerated, it shows an ever present phenomenon we have to deal with, a phenomenon which can cause misunderstanding or be easily abused.
Of course this barrier exists between contemporary languages too, the idiom "lost in translation" exists for a reason -- translating something always loses or at least changes something. Translating one sentence over and over to different languages and back to the original one will most likely produce a sentence with very distinct meaning.
This is the grand issue that common people almost universally overlook, most will naively think that with careful effort it is possible to express oneself so clearly that others simply won't be able to misunderstand -- this is sadly false, even with most carefully crafted sentences language always extremely easily allows any word to be twisted by politicians to anything they want, it destroys old knowledge and prevents us from communicating with clarity and recording ideas so that they would last into the future. This damnation of language plagues every book, authors constantly complain "I should have rather used this and that word" but that wouldn't even help, it's impossible to say something so as to not be misunderstood because human language is a weak, crippled tool just based on shouting weird sounds in hopes someone will get a vague idea of what's going on in your head. Due to this limitation of language it is absolutely worthless to discuss anything if after 5 minutes you don't come to agreement, the discussion will lead nowhere, it's best to just leave it at communication being impossible because even if linguistically you speak the same language, you cannot communicate correct meanings, even words like "is", "when", "bad" or "will" will have absolutely different meanings, you would have to define every word of every sentence and then every word of every new sentence you produce for 1000 years until you come to circular definitions when you'll still be disagreeing but won't even be able to waste time further.
This issue is very hard to solve, maybe impossible. It seems that due to the extreme complexity of real life our language can't operate with precise equations but rather has to settle with concepts that are just fuzzy blobs that our brains -- neural networks in our heads -- learn by trial and error over many years. We learn that if we hear the word X, it's best to react by feeling fear or turning our head or closing our eyes etc.
{ The only idea of a solution on how to make a "mathematically precise" human language for real world communication is the following. Firstly make a mathematical model of some artificial world that's similar to ours, for simplicity we can now just consider something like a 2D grid with differently colored cells, i.e. something like a cellular automaton. The world changes in steps and each cell can "talk", i.e. at any frame it can emit a text string. Now make a language that's precisely defined in this world; if the world is simple, it's pretty doable e.g. like this: write a function in some programming language that takes the world and check if what the cells are saying classifies as your language used in a correct way within this world (so the function just returns true/false, nothing else is needed). Now this single function mathematically defines your language -- by looking at your function's source code anyone can derive the absolutely correct meaning of any word or sentence because he can see how the function checks whether that word of phrase is used correctly, he will know exactly which situations fit given sentence and which don't. Now the final step is only to find correspondence between the real life and your simplified mathematical world, e.g. that cells represent humans and so on (but this will have shortcomings, e.g. our simple world will make it difficult or impossible to talk about body parts since cells have none; also making the connection between the mathematical world and real world relies on intuition). ~drummyfish }
{ Yet another, maybe more practical idea would be to create a set of very few core words -- let's say 100, which we would try to define extremely precisely by all the current imperfect means but with very elevated effort, i.e. each word would have a detailed description, translations to 20 other natural languages, positive and negative examples, pictures attached etc. Then the rest of the language would be defined only using these core words. But maybe it wouldn't work -- the language would be possibly a bit more stable but would eventually degenerate as well. ~drummyfish }
See also stereotype.
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Before we dive into comparing and documenting languages, we should at least briefly address the infamous issues of "what qualifies as a separate language", specifically the question: What is a language of its own versus what's just a dialect of another language?. In short: it's entirely arbitrary, dialect is often understood to be a slight deviation from an "official" version of a language, which is still very much mutually intelligible, but intelligibility is firstly tricky and fuzzy (it's not the same both ways, it depends on HOW the language is spoken, WHAT is discussed, whether it's written or spoken conversation etc.) BUT, most importantly, the matter of proclaiming something a language is political and cultural -- if there are enough people pressuring for something to be called a language of its own, then that's how it's going to be, it's really like the question of "what qualifies as a country". There are many "dialect" that are mutually unintelligible (like Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese) and "languages" that are extremely similar and completely mutually intelligible (like Czech and Slovak). So out of convenience we'll mostly just follow the established agreements, but know that objectively there's no clear line between a language and a dialect.
Recommendation for a fun activity: a cool hobby for long winter nights is to compare various passages of text in different languages, you get to discover hilarious words this way. A way to do this is to take a famous movie (Pulp Fiction for instance) and download subtitles in many different languages, or do the same with a famous book, or take a look at some translations of libre games etc.
This section will now list a table of noteworthy languages. Here are explanations for some of its columns: classes can include IE (Indo-European), G (Germanic), R (Romance), S (Slavic), U (Uralic), H (Helenic), ST (Sino-Tibetan), AA (Afroasiatic), C (constructed); fr. letters lists three statistically most common "letters" in the language. It's probably needless to say that languages are fuzzy, difficult to "measure" and constantly changing, so this is merely a "snapshot" of the present situation.
{ I'll appreciate corrections from actual speakers of the languages, for example on the animal sounds or rude words, thank you. ~drummyfish }
| language | self name | classes | code(s) | some countries | ~nat. sp. | "What's your name?" | hi, yes, no, cat, dog | counting (1, 2, 3, ...) | dog sound | call a cat | rude words | some loan words | fr. letters | notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Afrikaans | Afrikaans | IE G | af | South Africa | 7 M | Wat is jou naam? | haai, ja, nee, kat, hond | een, twee, drie, vier, vyf, ses | woef | fok, kak, kont, naai, poes | Young language, very similar to Dutch and English. | |||
| Ancient Greek | Not a single language but rather various forms of Greek that were used in ancient Greece, historical significance is similar to Latin. | |||||||||||||
| Arabic | لعربية (arabi) | AA | ar | Egypt, Iraq, S. Arabia | 400 M | ما اسمك؟, (Ma ismuka?) | marhaba, naam, la, qita, kalb | wahid, ithnen, thalatha, arba | hab hab | algebra, alcohol | Sounds fast, weird script written right to left, difficult to learn, liturgical language of Islam. | |||
| Aramaic | AA | 0.5 M | Mënyo ëshmokh or ëshmukh? | qadmai, tinyana, tlitai | guitar, pizza | Native language of Jesus, nowadays spoken only by few (and in altered form of course). | ||||||||
| Black Speech | C | Mordor | 0 | Fictional language of Mordor in Lord of the Rings. | ||||||||||
| Bulgarian | български | IE S | bg | Bulgaria | 7 M | как се казваш (Kak se kazvash?) | edno, dve, tri, četiri, pet | bau bau | ||||||
| Chinese | 汉语 (haiu) | ST | zh | China | 1 B | 你贵姓大名? (Ni quixing daming?) | nihao, shiduh, booshi, mao, gou | ee, aar, san, sz, wuu, lio, chi | wang wang | mimimi | tea, zen, soy | Seen as hardest lang., many mut. unint. variants/dialects (=> may be rather a lang. family), e.g. Cantonese and Mandarin, "chink chong", soft sounds ("shii", "shoo", "chii", ...), pitch matters, disastrous writing (1 word = 1 character), no gram. tense. | ||
| Croatian | hrvatski | IE S | hr | Croatia | 5 M | Kako se zoveš? | bok, da, ne, mačka, pas | jedan, dva, tri, četiri, pet | vau vau | mic mic mic | sranje, pizda, kurac, pička | aio | Kinda similar to Czech/Slovak/Polish, seems to have a lot of "ch" (as in "chicken") sounds, has 7 cases. | |
| Czech | čeština | IE S | cs | Czechia | 10 M | Jak se jmenuješ? | ahoj, ano, ne, kočka, pes | jedna, dvě, tři, čtyři, pět | haf haf | čičiči (chi) | kurva, piča, hovno, negr, zmrd | robot | oea | Very similar to Slovak (mut. int.) but with harder sound, 7 cases and 3 genders, infamous "ř" which some consider the most unique and difficult sound to pronounce ever -- by this it can be recognized. |
| Danish | dansk | IE G | da | Denmark | 6 M | Hvad er dit navn? | vuf vuf | ks ks ks | satan, fanden, skid, neger | Sounds a little bit like German and Dutch minus the pig sounds. | ||||
| Dragontongue (Dovah) | Dovahzul | C | Wo los hi? | drem yol lok, geh, nid, kaaz, dok | gein, zein, sed, hir, hen, sok | Dragon language in the Elder Scrolls universe (especially the game Skyrim). | ||||||||
| Dutch | Nederlands | IE G | nl | Netherlands | 25 M | Wat is jouw naam? | hallo, ja, nee, kat, hond | waf waf | ps ps ps | kut, kanker, nikker, lul | ena | Similar to English but with added "grunting" pig sounds, weirdly swear words are often diseases. | ||
| English | English | IE G | en | UK, USA, Australia | 400 M | What's your name? | hi, yes, no, cat, dog | one, two, three, four, five | woof woof | cunt, shit, fuck, nigger | eta | Most spoken worldwide (counting non-native sp.), simple grammar, fixed order, no accents, "r" as if with "hot potato in mouth", awkward spelling, can't say the Spanish "j", universal language of today, mut. int. with Scots. | ||
| English: Australian | IE G | Australia | 28 M | Very similar to UK. | ||||||||||
| English: Irish | IE G | Ireland | 7 M | Most prominent probably pronunciations of "th" as "t" or "d", pronounce "r"s. | ||||||||||
| English: New Zealand | IE G | New Zealand | 5 M | Pronounce certain letters differently, e.g. "pen" sounds like "pin". | ||||||||||
| English: UK | IE G | UK | 70 M | "Bri'ish", sounds soft, snobby and arrogant, "r" often silent, final "a" in a word may be pronounced as "r". | ||||||||||
| English: USA | IE G | USA | 300 M | kitty kitty | Harder sound than UK, always pronounces "r" that also sounds very hard, which makes the language easier to understandable, "t" often sounds like "d", speakers open mouth very wide when talking. | |||||||||
| Esperanto | Esperanto | C | eo | 1 K | Kio estas via nomo? | saluton, jes, ne, kato, hundo | unu, du, tri, kvar, kvin, ses | boj boj | piĉo, feko, putino, ĉuro | aie | Most famous constructed language, even has a few native speakers, sounds similar to Italian, in general resembled Romance languages, is very easy to learn thanks to completely regular grammar and vocab. borrowed from many existing languages. | |||
| Finnish | suomi | U | fi | Finland | 5 M | Mikä sinun nimesi on? | hei, kyllä, ei, kissa, koira | yksi, kaksi, kolme, neljä | hau hau | ks ks ks | ena | Has 14 cases and inflections, so word order is not fixed, stress often on first syllable. | ||
| French | français | IE R | fr | France, Belgium, Canada | 200 M | Comment tu t'appelles? | salut, oui, non, chat, chien | un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq | ouah ouah | minou minou | putain, con, merde, négraille | desire, sacrifice | esa | Very unique and distinctive gay sound of French shows to what degree a serious language like Latin can degenerate, notable is the soft "r" and phrases like "ooo la la!", making duckfaces. |
| German | Deutsch | IE G | de | Germany, Austria | 100 M | Wie heißt du? | hallo, ja, nein, katze, hund | eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf | wau wau | mitz mitz | scheisse, fick, fotze, schwein | eni | Hard and rough staccato rhythm sound, unpleasant, very long words, identifiable by characteristic rolling "r" and articles like "das", "der" etc. | |
| Greek | ελληνικά (elinika) | IE H | el | Greece | 13 M | Πώς σε λένε? (Pos se lene?) | ena, dio, tria, tesera, pende | ghav ghav | ps ps ps | chronology | aoi | Famously using the weird Greek alphabet, its old version is very historically significant. | ||
| Hebrew | עִבְרִית (ivrit) | AA | he | 7 M | מַה שִּׁמְךָ? (Ma shimkha) | hav hav | ||||||||
| Hindi | हिन्दी (hindi) | IE | hi | India | 350 M | तुम्हारा नाम क्या हे (Tumhaara naam kya he?) | ek, do, tīn, cār, pāṅc, chah | bho bho | Language of India, sounds quite fast, has that very specific "clicky" pronunciation of certain sounds like "t", "r" and "d", weird script, women talk in high pitch squeaking. | |||||
| Hungarian | magyar | U | hu | Hungary | 14 M | Mi a neve? | szia, igen, nem, macska, kutya | egy, kettő, három, négy, öt | vau vau | cic cic cic | Super gibberish, many "sh" sounds, has 18 cases. | |||
| Interslavic | medžuslovjansky | isv | 0 | Kako je tvoje ime? | ahoj, da, ne, kot, pes | jedin, dva, tri, četyri, pęt́ | pizda, kurva, govno, jebe | Constructed language to be understood any Slavic language speaker. { As a Czech native I can understand it without ever having studied it, especially in written form, sounds like Polish or Croatian but understandable. ~drummyfish } | ||||||
| Italian | italiano | IE R | it | Italy | 60 M | Come ti chiami? | ciao, sí, no, gatto, cane | uno, due, tre, quattro, cinque | bau bau | micio micio | cazzo, merda, fica, puttana | lava, piano | eai | Pleasant, melodic, resembles Latin and singing, many vowels. Body language such as waving hands in the air is part of speaking Italian correctly, iconic phrases such as "spaghetti al dente, mamma mia!". |
| Japanese | 日本語 (nihongo) | ja | Japan | 100 M | お名前はなんですか? (Onamae wa nan desu ka) | ossu, hai, iie, neko, inu | ichi, ni, san, yon, go, roku | wan wan | neko neko | bonsai, judo | rnu | Mysterious origin, recognizable keywords: "desu", "ka", ... Can't pronounce "l" (says "r"), everything ends with "u", women talk like squeaky toys, brutal writing (little easier than Chinese), different "politeness" levels, "doesn't have swearwords". | ||
| Klingon | C | tlh | 0 | nuq 'oH ponglIj'e'? | nuqneH, hija', qo', vighro', ha'dibah | wa', cha', wej, loS, vagh, jav | Fictional constructed language from Star Trek, in real life spoken mainly by boomer nerds. Learning the language will make you never get laid. | |||||||
| Korean | 한국어 (hangukeo) | ko | Korea | 80 M | 이름이 뭐에요? (Ileum i mwo eyo?) | il, i, sam, sa, o, yuk, chil | meong meong | kimchi, taekwondo | Sounds like Japanese but isn't (lacks of "Japanese keywords"), simple writing sys., starts to incorporate many English words. | |||||
| Latin | Latinum | IE R | la | 0 | Quid est nomen tibi? | heus, ita, non, felis, canis | ūnus, duo, trēs, quattuor | mundane, altruism | eit | Officially not spoken anymore but many enthusiasts learn it, historically significant, similar to Italian, everything is in CAPSLOCK, doesn't have "U" (uses "V"), characteristic word endings such as "us", "um". | ||||
| Lojban | la .lojban. | C | jbo | ma cmene do | coi, go'i, na go'i, mlatu, gerku | pa, re, ci, vo, mu, xa, ze, bi | Constructed language designed to be syntactically unambiguous. | |||||||
| Newspeak | inclusive English | moderated | question moderated for privacy concerns | nigger, retard, slave | xer, blocklist | Language from a famous dystopian sci-fi (now reality) book 1984, a version of English formed to serve brainwashing and thought control. At the time of writing the book the language was fictional, nowadays already implemented. | ||||||||
| Norwegian | norsk | IE G | no | Norway | 4 M | Hva heter du? | én, to, tre, fire, fem, seks | woff woff | ps ps ps | Frankly a weird language, to a non-speaker sounds at times like a mix of all other languages. Is mutually intelligible with Swedish and Danish. | ||||
| Polish | polski | IE S | pl | Poland | 40 M | Jak się nazywasz? | cześć, tak, nie, kot, pes | jeden, dwa, trzy, cztery, pięć | hau hau | kichi kichi | kurwa, pizda, chuj, gówno | iae | Similar to Czech/Slovak, has many "sz", "sh", "ch" sounds, stress usually on penultimate syllable, has 7 cases. | |
| Portuguese | português | IE R | pt | Portugal, Brazil | 250 M | Como te chamas? | olá, sim, não, gato, cachorro | um, dois, três, quatro, cinco | au au | psh psh psh | puta, foder, merda, cona | aeo | Basically Spanish with funny pronunciation, speakers of the two languages can understand each other to a high degree. Loanwords: flamingo, tank, jaguar, ... | |
| (neo)Quenya (elvish) | quenya | C | qya | 0 | Man esselya ná? | aia, ná, lá, yaulë, röa | minë, atta, neldë, canta, lempë | One of two major elvish languages from Lord of the Rings, in the universe culturally similar to Latin. | ||||||
| Romanian | română | IE R | ro | Romania | 22 M | Cum vă numiți? | bună, da, nu, pisică, câine | unu, doi, trei, patru, cinci | ham ham | ps ps ps | eia | Sounds similar to Italian, has a lot borrowed from Slavic languages. | ||
| (neo)Sindarin (elvish) | eglathrin | C | sjn | Middle Earth | 0 | Man en eneth gîn? | a, no, û,i muig, hû | min, tâd, nêl, canad, leben | One of two major elvish languages from Lord of the Rings, more for daily use. | |||||
| Russian | русский (ruski) | IE S | ru | Russia | 150 M | Как тебя зовут? (Kak tebia zovut?) | odin, dva, tri, četyre, pjať | gav gav | ks ks ks | mammoth, tundra | oea | Written in Cyrillic, characteristic sounds like "blj", speaking with duckface and long end and middle parts of words, has 6 cases. | ||
| Sanskrit | IE | sa | 0 | तव नाम किम् (Tavva nama kim?) | avatar, nirvana | Old language, nowadays spoken only by few, sacred most notably to Hinduism, important to Asia where it's something akin to what Latin and old Greek is to Europe. | ||||||||
| Scots | Scots | IE G | sco | Scotland | 1.5 M | Whit's yer name? | hullo, ay, naw, cat, dug | wan, twa, three, fower, five | Spoken in parts of Scotland, is mutually intelligible with English, often described as "English with funny spelling". | |||||
| Slovak | slovenčina | IE S | sk | Slovakia | 5 M | Ako sa voláš? | ahoj, áno, nie, mačka, pes | jeden, dva, tri, štyri, päť | kokot, chuj, jebať, hovno | aoe | Super similar to Czech (mut. int.), sounds much softer and more pleasant, especially e.g. the letter "l", also compared to Czech doesn't have bullshit like "ř" and vocative case, has 6 cases total. | |||
| Slovene (Slovenian) | slovenščina | IE S | sl | Slovenia | 2.5 M | Kako ti je ime? | živjo, da, ne, mačka, pes | ena, dve, tri, štiri, pet, šest | hov hov | muc muc | ||||
| Spanish | español | IE R | es | Spain, Mexico, Cuba, Chile | 500 M | ¿Cómo te llamas? | hola, sí, no, gato, perro | un, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco | guau guau | bs bs bs | puta, cabrón, joder, mierda | caldera, mosquito | eao | Extremely fast, pleasant and similar to Italian, normal and hard "r" ("rr"), can't say "h" (always silent), recognizable patterns e.g. "El XXXo", "Los XXXos" etc. Uncyclopedia: "essentially Latin for retards". Worldwide, useful, upside down question marks. |
| Spanish: Mexican | IE R | Mexico | 130 M | Uses a lot of diminutives (e.g. "ahorita"), uses only formal form of plural "you" (ustedes), has specific words and meanings. | ||||||||||
| Swedish | svenska | IE G | sv | Sweden | 10 M | Vad heter du? | hej, ja, nej, katt, hund | en, två, tre, fyra, fem, sex | vov vov | ks ks ks | fitta, fittjävlar, fan, neger | ean | Mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish, doesn't have the "ch" (as in "chicken") sound. | |
| Thai (Siamese) | ภาษาไทย (phasa thai) | th | Thailand | 27 M | คุณชีออะไร? (kun chêu a-rai?) | hong hong | ||||||||
| Toki Pona | toki pona | C | tok | 0 | nimi sina li seme? | toki, lon, ala, soweli pona (both) | wan, tu, wan tu, tu tu, luka | New constructed language claiming to be highly minimalist, however also looks kind of SJW. | ||||||
| Turkish | Türkçe | tr | Turkey | 80 M | İsmin ne? | hav hav | ps ps ps | aei | Stress on last syllable, written in weird kind of Latin script. | |||||
| Ukrainian | українська | IE S | uk | Ukraine | 20 M | Як тебе звати? (Jak tebe zvati?) | odin, dva, tri, čotyry, pjať | gav gav | ks ks ks | oan | Different from Russian but sounds the same, has 7 cases. | |||
| Vietnamese | Tiếng Việt | vi | Vietnam | 100 M | Bạn tên gì? | gau gau | Typical Asian "meowing" sound, but despite this it's interestingly written in Latin script, which also excessively uses diacritics. It's a tonal language (pitches distinguish meanings of words) like Chinese. | |||||||
| Yiddish | ייִדיש (yidish) | IE G | yi | Israel | 4 M | װי הײסטו (Vi heystu?) | Spoken by Jews, developed in Jewish diaspora, an interesting "Frankenstein monster" mix of German, Hebrew and other languages, written right to left. |
Language curiosities: Harold Whitmore Williams (*1876) allegedly spoke 58 languages and is sometimes considered the most accomplished polyglot. The most common sound found in all languages is "a", the most unique probably the Czech "ř". Language with smallest alphabet is probably Rotokas, spoken in Papua New Guinea, with only 12 letters. English word with the most meanings is apparently "set" (almost 200). Longest non-technical word in English is "antidisestablishmentarianism", but if we impose no limits, there is a name of a chemical that's 189819 letters long. Some languages, such as Slovenian or Japanese, don't have extremely vulgar words. TODO: more
TODO: numbers, average word length, longest word, number of letters in alphabet, ...
Even though we now live in times of near perfect AI translators, we still highly recommend learning foreign languages -- the quick and easy way of pushing a single button is always for the normie way, and it comes for a cost. Using translators to understand foreign language is like using ChatGPT to write computer programs: not only are you totally dependent on a computer and completely blind to what's going on, left to the mercy of the machine to not make a mistake, but you will never understand the bigger picture, you will never experience the side effect of programmer's thinking, the intellectual stimulation and seeing the world through the eyes of a programmer. And the same applies to languages, for language is not just words but a culture, history, people and untranslatable concepts. Language learning stimulates the brain and helps keep it fresh, it prevents aging of brain and opens the door to new rich cultures, it spawns new ideas.
How difficult is it to learn a foreign language? This depends on numerous factors such as what level you aim to reach, how similar the foreign language is to a language you already know, how talented you are (correlated with how much you enjoy language learning), how complicated the language is, how effectively you study etc. Depending on all this it can take somewhere between a year and a decade to reach fluency. As for the level, CEFR is a widely used standardization of measuring a "degree of knowing a language" and it defines 6 levels from the absolute beginner to a master: A1, A2, B1, B2, C1 and C2. Your level can be assessed by an official test (paid) but can also be easily estimated: to claim you really know a language well you should be C1 or C2, and this can take somewhere near 1000 hours (very roughly, again depending a lot on the actual language etc.), but to just "get by", which can already be an awesome skill to have, it's fine to reach the B level (requiring about half of the effort).
Let's also quickly address a very common question: is there a universal, free, 100% effective and guaranteed method to learn a language for everyone? Surprisingly it seems like yes, just follow this routine: ONE HUNDRED push-up, ONE HUNDRED sit-up, ... ummm actually not this one, it's this: ACTIVELY and with FULL FOCUS watch one 10 minute video in the foreign language EVERY SINGLE DAY. No cheating, no translated subtitles (subtitles in the foreign language are good), no skips, do nothing else while watching the video, translate commonly repeated unknown words with a dictionary and mentally interact with the video. Make the videos diverse, from simple to difficult, with different speakers and on different topics. This is all you need to do to learn a language, but it will take some time, probably from 1 to 5 years. If you want it faster, watch longer videos and/or add other exercises on top. For more detail read the tips below. And no, there is no magical app or book to pour a language into your brain without effort, either decide you're willing to dedicate 10 minutes of your day to learn a language or don't do it.
Intuitively you can think of the language skills like this:
Here are some tips for learning foreign languages:
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