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> a wide variety of languages as diverse as English, French, and Russian As a linguist this makes me despair. These are all Indo-European languages, and not very exotic ones at that. It's like "as diverse as white, off-white, ivory, and bone." There are so many languages which would stretch your brain more. I loved Latin back in the day, and Greek, but if you want exotic Indo-European languages, try Welsh or Old Irish. And if you want really exotic languages, leave Indo-European altogether. If you want to stick to Europe, try Basque, Finnish, or Hungarian. If you're willing to stretch your legs, try Seneca or Yindjibarndi. Swahili isn't too difficult, but it's very, very different from Latin. Hell, try Mandarin, though non-alphabetic writing systems kill my interest. Too much work on what I regard as a side point. If you want to make your brain explode (and who doesn't?), look into the Khoisan languages. Go here and listen to the speech sample. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ju%C7%80%CA%BChoan_language Amazing. |
Why in god’s green earth would a random HN comment make you do that? I’m not a linguist and I have very limited experience beyond Indo-European languages, just like I have very limited experience with languages like Brainfuck or Ada - each of which might as well be as foreign to me as Mandarin or Swahili. I just didn’t bother to add that addendum because it would otherwise be a ten thousand word comment.
Laymen will be laymen. To despair over that is a path to nothing but torment.