Languages are Our Passion — And Our Work
And most of our work tends to be done in languages like Spanish, English, Japanese or Mandarin Chinese. Languages spoken by many people around the world.
{We need to interject here that just because a language is common, doesn’t mean that it isn’t weird Spanish and Mandarin Chinese are both common and weird languages. In fact, English is one of the weirdest languages in the world, ranking number 33.}
But sometimes we are called in to work on projects in less common languages. And that got us thinking. What are the weirdest languages in the world?
Weird is Relative — Of Course
But, according to which theory you’re fond of, you might believe that there was a proto-universal language, sometimes called proto-Human. And if so, then you believe that all languages came from one proto-root language, or the idea of mono-genesis. The mother tongue of them all, so to speak. You might be a fan of Sergei Sargostin and Merrit Rhulen, among others.
And if so, then you might want to hope against hopes that all languages have at least something in common. So those languages which we could call outliers, the ones that seem to have nothing at all in common with any other language, could be considered weird. So we’re going with that.
Weirdest Languages — In No Particular Order:
This information, by the way, comes from a study done by a language processing company called Idibon. And also, by the way, the most common language in the world? Hindu. There you go. But on to the weirdest ones. The top five are all complete outliers, languages which have least in common with other languages in the world.
- Mixtec — This language, unlike most languages in the world, does nothing to indicate a question. Most languages tack on a “question word” at the end of the sentence to indicate a question, while a very few will invert subject and verb (as English does). Mixtec, however, does nothing.
- Nenets — This language is spoken in northern Russia by the Nenets people, and has a sister language, called Forrest Nenets. It is spoken still by the Nenets people, and passed down to the children. However, because the land where these people live is threatened, their language and culture are threatened as well.
- Choctaw — The Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma offers free language classes to anyone who would like to learn this language.
- Mesa Grande — Also known as Dieguno, this language is spoken by the Mesa Grande Band of the Mission Indians. Their tribal government is based in southern California, east of Escondido. A conservative estimate is that there are 25 speakers of this language left.
- Oromo — In Ethiopia, northern Kenya, and Somalia, Oromo is spoken. Perhaps the most famous speaker of Oromo is Hallie Sallasie, the Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974. With over 40,000,000 speakers world wide, however, this is not an uncommon language.