The Most Batshit Natlang Competition!

[----]

It makes it hard for me. I suck at distinguishing grammatical tone
But as for the most batshit I'm gonna have to cast a vote for Georgian as well. I've been trying to learn it, and the grammar, especially the verbs is just ungodly terrible.

[alice]

Gaelic has a similar reputation for being tricky, but I don't know how much that is compaired to other languages.

The worst of it is trying to figure out how to pronounce it. If you don't know the rules, it can be most disconcerting to learn that Fhionnlaigh is actually pronounced /"ju:.L@/, and even if you do, about half the words are exceptions in some way or other. Otherwise it's not too difficult, just unusual in the way it does some things.

[Zumir]

...Fhionnlaigh is actually pronounced /"ju:.L@/...

Jaw falls off.
I guess I should have seen that coming, considering the pronounciation of Caiomhe, but still. Wow.
Also, number your votes. For realz.

[Bristel]

...Fhionnlaigh is actually pronounced /"ju:.L@/...

Jaw falls off.
I guess I should have seen that coming, considering the pronounciation of Caiomhe, but still. Wow.
Also, number your votes. For realz.

Yes, Celtic spelling (at least for modern Irish) is insane...

I actually feel more comfortable writing Old Irish because for me it seems more regular.

Old Irish: because the verbal system is more complex than any classical language I have ever seen.

(no you number this, I lost track)

[Ulan]

Anyone for Bella Coola/Nuxálk?

[Jetboy]

Old Irish: because the verbal system is more complex than any classical language I have ever seen.

From what I've heard about it, I have to agree; I mean, read this. It sounds completely insane (but also awesome).

[Zumir]

(no you number this, I lost track)

Ulan's vote came 15th. So far the only languages with 2 votes are Nuxalk and Georgian.

[Jetboy]

Ah, if I wasn't clear, I was voting for Old Irish, seconding Bristel's vote.

[Xephyr]

Does anybody want to put up for candidacy a language about which they know MORE than the opening paragraph of its Wikipedia article? If not, I can just list names as much as you can: Jawara, Hixkaryana, Halkomelem, Dyirbal, Piraha, KEKEKEKEKEKEKEK AREN'T I ADORABLE!

[Nortaneous]

Oh, right, Piraha exists. Changing my vote to that.

[Bristel]

Does anybody want to put up for candidacy a language about which they know MORE than the opening paragraph of its Wikipedia article? If not, I can just list names as much as you can: Jawara, Hixkaryana, Halkomelem, Dyirbal, Piraha, KEKEKEKEKEKEKEK AREN'T I ADORABLE!

That's nice.

I actually know a lot about Old Irish beyond the first paragraph of the Wikipedia page. (which there is not a lot on the page in the first place)

[finlay]

Gaelic has a similar reputation for being tricky, but I don't know how much that is compaired to other languages.

The worst of it is trying to figure out how to pronounce it. If you don't know the rules, it can be most disconcerting to learn that Fhionnlaigh is actually pronounced /"ju:.L@/, and even if you do, about half the words are exceptions in some way or other. Otherwise it's not too difficult, just unusual in the way it does some things.

Ironically, the name that Finlay was derived from. However, i think that's a mutated from with the Fh at the beginning, but still.

[MisterBernie]

I've often heard that Finnish is very hard to learn, with living in Finland being a must to fully master it. Not sure how true that is.

Maybe, but phonologically, it's way too tame.

[Risla]

Oh, I'd like to nominate Aymara for having the most fucked up morphophonology. Every time I try to learn Aymara I emerge more than slightly baffled by the damn morphophonology.

[Travis B.]

As for orthographic batshitness, one cannot neglect to nominate Tibetan, of course.

[Yng]

Irish orthography really isn't that bad once you know the rules - sure, it's not very intuitive for an English speaker, but it serves Irish's needs pretty well. Gaelic is pretty weird, though. Too many silent consonants.

[Acid Badger]

Irish orthography really isn't that bad once you know the rules - sure, it's not very intuitive for an English speaker, but it serves Irish's needs pretty well. Gaelic is pretty weird, though. Too many silent consonants.

Seconded, though I am far from knowing how to read Irish. Nevertheless I think that Irish orthography is one example for a Latin based orthography which is adapted very well to the language's phonological system. I mean, you could represent velarization and/or palatalization with diactrics, with cyrillic-style hard/soft-marks etc, but the current system does a better job anyway. Plus, the history-cause flaws like the pronunciation of dh adds a certain coolness to it.

And well, third vote for Georgian here. I read a lot about it, and the verbs seems to be almost completely random. The ergative is used only with the Aorist-tense afaik, and the aorist ist also used as imperative.

[ná'oolkiłí]

Georgian isn't really that bad. If you read about the verb system without actually putting it into practice, yes, it does seem absurd. But once I started actively studying the language I learned it is much more manageable. The verbal morphology is not nearly as cut and dry as, say, Spanish, that's for sure, but there are patterns everywhere. Grammars will present every possible morpheme that can occupy every possible slot—but in reality the verbs that deviate most from the norm will either be incredibly rare (and thus don't have anything near the statistical weight they might appear to have) or very common (and thus quickly memorized). As for the consonant clusters that people read about on Wikipedia and freak out about, the same can be said of them. Most syllables are of the shape CV(C) or CCV(C). CCC(+)V syllables aren't terribly common, and when they occur they are usually conform to rules for their shape that makes them pretty manageable. I do admit that the language has a very unusual MSA, but it's pretty easy to get a hang of.

[----]

Georgian isn't really that bad. If you read about the verb system without actually putting it into practice, yes, it does seem absurd. But once I started actively studying the language I learned it is much more manageable. The verbal morphology is not nearly as cut and dry as, say, Spanish, that's for sure, but there are patterns everywhere. Grammars will present every possible morpheme that can occupy every possible slot—but in reality the verbs that deviate most from the norm will either be incredibly rare (and thus don't have anything near the statistical weight they might appear to have) or very common (and thus quickly memorized). As for the consonant clusters that people read about on Wikipedia and freak out about, the same can be said of them. Most syllables are of the shape CV(C) or CCV(C). CCC(+)V syllables aren't terribly common, and when they occur they are usually conform to rules for their shape that makes them pretty manageable. I do admit that the language has a very unusual MSA, but it's pretty easy to get a hang of.

You do have a lot of very good points there. I can't find any resources though, the few websites I've found have had no vocabulary on them save the small examples to demonstrate how the stuff works and they use some pretty limited and not so useful verbs in the examples.

[ná'oolkiłí]

Three (the three?) textbooks are on uz-translations.net. They each have their pros and cons, but they're not bad when used together. I don't think there's a good grammar there, though, unfortunately. As for dictionaries, I have yet to find a good one online =(

[Drydic]

Three (the three?) textbooks are on uz-translations.net. They each have their pros and cons, but they're not bad when used together. I don't think there's a good grammar there, though, unfortunately. As for dictionaries, I have yet to find a good one online =(

http://www.armazi.com/georgian/

It's been the standby georgian grammar online for probably a decade, though through several different sites. I don't know about its accuracy as I haven't made myself look through it.

[----]

I've been using armazi and it's been very helpful with the grammar but vocabulary is the main thing I'm having difficulty finding. There's just not that many different words on there that I've found. That uz website looks pretty legit though, thanks for that!

[chris_notts]

I'll nominate Tariana, not because of its phonology but because of the insane amount of stuck it packs into its syntax and morphology. This is mostly thanks to it being an Arawak language heavily influenced by neighbouring Tucano languages, so it ended up with the grammatical categories of both families more or less.

[roninbodhisattva]

Anyone for Bella Coola/Nuxálk?

Oh come on, suck it up.

Salish isn't that bad.

[Zumir]

[xɬpʼχʷɬtʰɬpʰɬːskʷʰt͡sʼ]. Nothing more needs to be said.