Anyone learning rare/endangered languages?

[linguoboy]

I guess I'm learning Irish.

Wait, what?

I haven't been paying much attention to my Teach Yourself Irish book or CDs lately.

Is dona an fear thú!

[Bristel]

I guess I'm learning Irish.

Wait, what?

I haven't been paying much attention to my Teach Yourself Irish book or CDs lately.

Is dona an fear thú!

Tá brón orm!

[Nannalu]

Well, like Chibi, I speak Afrikaans which isn't necessarily... endangered, but rare. I am also learning Halkomelem which may probably die out anyway, but it's kinda like Nuxálk but with ~a substantial Wikipedia article~.

Apart from that, not much else, really.

[Bristel]

Well, like Chibi, I speak Afrikaans which isn't necessarily... endangered, but rare. I am also learning Halkomelem which may probably die out anyway, but it's kinda like Nuxálk but with ~a substantial Wikipedia article~.

Apart from that, not much else, really.

Impart upon me your knowledge of Halkomelem, oh great one. *bows down*

Halkomelem is a big influence on my Squalipsh conlang, especially with the root forms taking certain CV combinations (verbs take different ones than nouns usually).

[Nannalu]

Well, like Chibi, I speak Afrikaans which isn't necessarily... endangered, but rare. I am also learning Halkomelem which may probably die out anyway, but it's kinda like Nuxálk but with ~a substantial Wikipedia article~.

Apart from that, not much else, really.

Impart upon me your knowledge of Halkomelem, oh great one. *bows down*

Halkomelem is a big influence on my Squalipsh conlang, especially with the root forms taking certain CV combinations (verbs take different ones than nouns usually).

omg isn't halkomelem aamamamamazingggg?!?!?!

[roninbodhisattva]

Well, like Chibi, I speak Afrikaans which isn't necessarily... endangered, but rare. I am also learning Halkomelem which may probably die out anyway, but it's kinda like Nuxálk but with ~a substantial Wikipedia article~.

Apart from that, not much else, really.

omg isn't halkomelem aamamamamazingggg?!?!?!

All of Salish is awesome. I love Salish. It's my language family of...well, basically specialization. Though I may be swinging away from it in my studies. I think I'm a Salishanist at heart.

I've taken a couple semesters of Ojibwe, which was fun, but a long time ago. And I can read some Montana Salish, with a dictionary. But that's not any kind of speaking ability. I'm currently being work on Karuk, a language of northwestern California, in a class at UC Berkeley. It's more a topic class in the languages grammar, but there's also a substantial practical side, which is fun.

[Bristel]

There's an interesting series of videos made by the Tulalip Tribe which is a conversational Lushootseed lesson series, which I've tried watching, but I'd like a lot more information than is given, like phonology and shit.

[Trailsend]

I was working at a language revitalization project last summer and learned Chinuk Wawa to fluency--I've been teaching it to some friends at school so I have someone to talk to. One is conversational so far, another is close. This summer I'm going to be working with the same organization in Montana (hey Ronin! ).

[corcaighist]

Does Estonian count? I'm learning that...for my sins!

[Mashmakhan]

Has anyone here encountered the Mati Ke language that Mark Abley wrote about in his book Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages? How about any of the other languages he mentions?

[linguoboy]

Has anyone here encountered the Mati Ke language that Mark Abley wrote about in his book Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages? How about any of the other languages he mentions?

You mean like Welsh?

[Mashmakhan]

Has anyone here encountered the Mati Ke language that Mark Abley wrote about in his book Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages? How about any of the other languages he mentions?

You mean like Welsh?

Yeah, I guess Welsh counts. I actually forgot that was in there...does anyone here know Welsh? (For some reason this sounds like a stupid question to ask).

[linguoboy]

(For some reason this sounds like a stupid question to ask).

What, just because we have a native speaker here?

[Mashmakhan]

(For some reason this sounds like a stupid question to ask).

What, just because we have a native speaker here?

No, because - even as a rare language - it is still quite commonly known amongst linguists and is therefore going to have a lot of people learning it as an L2. I would ask the same thing of Quechua even if we had one or more native Quechua speakers on the board. My fault for not specifying whether it had to be an L1 or L2, though. I thought this thread was about what rare languages people were learning as an L2. Sorry 'bout that

[Turtlehead]

The only thing that can save a language is if it is spoken by a governing class. Most languages are doomed if they aren't the common tongue of a community.

[Astraios]

The first sentence is false, the second one blindingly obvious.

[sirdanilot]

There are many languages which have only a couple thousand speakers that are still thriving. Take for example Trio, a Carib language of Surinam/Brazil (which I studied for a semester or so). Though it has less than 2000 speakers, these people don't have that much contact with the outside world and most of them are monolingual. There are even smaller tribes of natives who are living among them and starting to speak Trio, while neglecting their native languages so that these die out (Mawayana, Siikhayana etc.)

Besides Trio (or Tiriyó or whatever) I haven't studied many nearly-extinct languages. I guess the dialect of the region I come from could count (Zeelandic) but it's the same story as Trio, really; though it doesn't have many speakers, most people who speak it aren't going to switch to standard Dutch while talking to their relatives and friends in the same village. They have been using standard Dutch in formal situations and dialect in informal situations for so long, that they are completely used to it. What does happen is 'degeneration'; more and more standard Dutch influence is imparted on the dialect.

[Drydic]

The only thing that can save a language is if it is spoken by a governing class.

Romani

[Xephyr]

The only thing that can save a language is if it is spoken by a governing class.

Romani

Catalan, Finnish, Russian, Sard, Kabyle, Nahuatl, Yucatec, Sakha, Kannada, Lingala, Cebuano......

Someone's probably gonna correct me on some of these, saying I am wrong and so wrong and completely wrong and stupid and wrong.

[finlay]

Like... Russian?

[Xephyr]

Why would I be wrong about Russian but not about Finnish?

[Drydic]

<Darth_Drydic> I mean, Russian was never in danger of being replaced by French
<Xephyr> That's my poynt!
<Xephyr> My poynt was it was spoken by the lowly classes but never even close to going extinct

[Rui]

If that's your case, then you could add English during the Norman conquest...

[finlay]

Why would I be wrong about Russian but not about Finnish?

Because Russian was the ruling class in Finland at one point.

[Xephyr]

Why would I be wrong about Russian but not about Finnish?

Because Russian was the ruling class in Finland at one point.

1) Yes, at a different point. Not during its marginalization in Russia by French.
2) How is that different? Finnish has been the language of the elite in Finland at other points in history (e.g. right now).