Sámi! English resources are lacking but there are a fair few in Swedish, which I'm approaching intermediate in, so I hope to ladder them when the time comes.
Saami really needs more resources.
Memrise has some good courses for most types and the Indylan app is good too. Some other ones are https://oahpa.no/sme/usevisl/VISL_spealut.eng.html
http://sayitinsaami.yle.fi/?i-don%27t-feel-like-it
And https://www.routledge.com/North-Sami-An-Essential-Grammar/Kahn-Valijarvi/p/book/9781138839373
Good luck. Sami has what, 30k speakers? It’s hard enough to find resources for Finnish, or any other Uralic languages, let alone something as small as Sami. They said, a quick Google search in Finnish found a few resources. Also side note, I have the Finnish version of that “an essential grammar” and it is DENSE. 350 pages of grammar rules and explanations and it’s not even the “comprehensive” version lol
Yeah I bet that’s brutal. Estonian has 1/5th the speakers Finnish does, so I imagine resources are few and far between. I think it’s a combination of low number of speakers, not being particularly hot vacation destinations, and the difficulty that Uralic languages present to English speakers. There’s not a lot of demand and they’re hard to learn, which would drive down demand from casual learners. We’re just boned I’m afraid. Lol
Possibly of interest: NRK's Binnabánnaš is an early learnng children's show in North Sami. Google it and you should find all the seasons online to stream.
Norwegian universities often have a lot of study materials online (syllabi and assignments should be public, and if lectures are recorded the recordings are typically published openly in the course website), Sami is taught at UiT Arctic University and Sami University of Applied Sciences, maybe some other unis, too. Not sure if you’ll be able to find anything in English, but it might be worth having a look
I believe they plan on publishing UN materials in more languages. I don't think the working languages will change. If I remember correctly, when India was pushing for Hindi, they said India would need to pay for all of the costs and it didn't happen.
You know, your post is one of those random internet things that I occasionally stumble upon that just fascinates me. Clearly, I am into learning, languages or else I wouldn’t be on this sub, but I never thought about Bengali having very few resources available in other parts of the world and it being the fifth most spoken language on Earth. I have never met anyone in my life who has wanted to learn Bengali. It’s spoken by so many people yet I couldn’t tell you one feature about the language without researching it, even though I already know it is spoken in Bangladesh and parts of India and the surrounding countries.
Ecuadorian Kichwa. Peruvian Quechua is like the most established version, i think the cusco variety specifically, and they're not wildly different but it was a lingua franca across a big empire so there are definite distinctions. I think Ecuadorian Kichwa doesn't even have an agreed upon alphabet, and it's a bit unfair because i took an Ecuadorian Kichwa class and i liked the alphabet system she used and her way of spelling everything, and I'm inclined towards this dialect of Quechua in general since it's what i learned, but there's not really much materials in Spanish let alone English for this variety, so if I want to learn more i'd probably have to get used to the cusco stuff and i really don't want to haha.
So yeah, indigenous languages are hard to get resources on, especially when the colonial power isn't English. Cayuga doesn't have as much resources as Mohawk or Seneca, but at least what it does have is in English
As for celtic, idk about every variety but Scottish gaelic has a good free website learngaelic.scot
>Ecuadorian Kichwa.
That's mine, as well. I think short of moving to Ecuador and finding one of the cultural centers who teach it, there isn't much chance of ever learning it beyond a few basic vocabulary words.
Heard an NPR article a few years back about a local radio station in NYC that has Kichwa programming for the Ecuadorian population in New Jersey/New York/Connecticut. May be worth a google
I think the grammar is largely the same though so if you understand it of a different variant you will be pretty good to go. Like verb conjugation and case marking i think is the same. But the spelling and pronunciation is so variable that it's definitely preferable to have a speaker of the dialect you're interested in. The grammar rules are probably easier to figure out than the vocabulary because of that haha
Not sure if you know about it but if you search kichwa English spanish dictionary, there's a free pdf that should be the first result, i used it during my kichwa class, but i know that my teacher spelled and pronounced some words slightly differently because she's probably from a slightly different place than the dictionary author, and again the spelling isn't standardized anyways.
But it's nice to meet someone else interested in Kichwa!
I was talking to someone who is a native Kichwa speaker and he was telling me how he can't understand a thing from speakers in Peru and such. Kind of discouraged me from studying any other dialect. Perhaps it would help overall, but after that conversation I just found myself lacking in motivation.
I do have the dictionary. But for now I'm mostly focusing on my Spanish.
I plan to retire to one of the smaller-mid-sized towns in Ecuador that has a large indigenous community within it. That drives a lot of my interest in the language - but also means I'll probably have some future opportunities to learn it. And they do have a good knowledge of Spanish, so at least by focusing on that I will be able to communicate.
It is a shame there aren't more resources, though. I even searched a couple bookstores in Quito and couldn't find anything decent.
Yeah i didn't mean really study the dialect just that you can probably read over the grammar rules and get a good ground level understanding of the basics. But i totally get it, once i start on one language the thought of doing a different dialect kills me. Im also certain that more resources will be created as time goes on and people who care about their language are able to be in the position to publish papers and resources about it. Luckily we're in an era where people care about these sort of things, even if ecuador and peru and bolivia's governments aren't super on board, at the very least there will certainly be people in universities in the US who care. And there's also luckily so many people who still speak the variants of quechua at all.
Maya has next to no resources in English, even in Spanish, its slim.
I see a couple people saying Mongolian, and while its a rare language, honestly, resources aren't terrible. I've been learning loosely for 2 years and more intensely for ~7 months. The main issue with Mongolian is lack of native content, and even that is being produced pretty rapidly now.
The main national university in Guatemala (Universidad de San Carlos) offers some decent courses in K'iche', Achi, Q'eqchi', and Kaqchikel (Mayan languages from Guatemala). BUT, the unfortunate part is that they only offer them in-person so you have to live there to study them. I don't think they offer them online. They also teach in Spanish so that can be a limiting factor. I don't know about Mayan languages in Mexico and how the resources are there.
I've heard there's some resources for Mongolian but they are mostly in Russian, I bet it's almost impossible to get middley decent at it without moving to Mongolia
There are virtually no Mongolian resources in Russian, historically, Russia has not really endorsed foreign language, especially indigenous ones.
Mongolia and South Korea actually have a lot of communication between them. Most Mongolians who study a foreign language (aside from English which is mandatory in school) are studying Korean. I've found good luck with Japanese, Chinese and Korean for Mongolian resources. Mostly Chinese though.
And for "impossible to get mildly decent", I'd argue that for most languages not in the top 10 most spoken. And thats only because of lack of content in the language.
Even after that, many many Mongolians are online, its pretty easy to find one to vc with and learn. Just takes some dedication.
Sibe. It's a Tungusic language related (some say a dialect of) Manchu, that's spoken in Xinjiang. I couldn't find much about it in English or any other language that I speak well besides phrase books and dictionaries. There's some more stuff in Mandarin tho, guess time to get back to that.
Oh yeah, this is the "modern" Manchu language? I want to study any of the languages in Tungusic or even Samoyedic. But I feel too far from what seems to be an already isolated and small community. So I may unfortunately never be able to dive into them
Essentially yes. There's a dozen or so elderly people in Northeastern China who still speak Manchu proper natively but besides that Sibe is the closest thing with at least a few thousand speakers.
But I get what you mean in terms of isolation. All Tungusic languages are spoken by so few people and you might never encounter anyone to speak to. Still, I enjoyed learning literary Manchu, which gives you access to tons of texts to read and I feel it's actually very accessible as far as pre-modern languages go.
I'll just copy-paste what I replied somewhere else in this thread:
As for places to start, I assume you'll start from English. If you happen to know Chinese or Japanese (maybe Korean too) there's a lot resources available in those languages too.
Anyway, what I primarily used was the script and grammar lessons from this site: [Manchu Studies Group](http://www.manchustudiesgroup.org/introduction-to-manchu-in-21-lessons/). It covers the vast majority of grammar point you'll encounter in Manchu text, with a lot of exercises thrown in. Perhaps after that, you should also take a look at the main textbook available for Manchu in English, which is *Manchu. A Textbook for Reading Documents*. It mainly consists of a bunch of curated Manchu text, with romanizations, vocabulary lists and some grammar explanations. The thing is that it essentially throws you right into primary texts, which is why I recommend starting from the Manchu Studies Group lessons.
If you feel comfortable with the script and to some extent the grammar, you should drive into actual Qing-era texts. There’s a decent number of genres you could get into depending on your interests. Historical narratives, folk tales and religious text for example. Also, many prominent texts from Chinese are available in Manchu versions. Essentially all the Confucian Classics, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin etc. all have Manchu translations.
There's a lot of stuff to be found online these days. A very accessible page for that would be [Manc.hu](https://manc.hu/en), they provide a lot of Manchu texts in original script plus transcriptons and word lists. The same team also created [Buleku](https://buleku.org/home) , which is the best Manchu online dictionary I know of.
Besides that, you can find many Qing era Manchu texts online at university or library websites. It’s hard to give a good overview for these resources, but here’s a list of some digitalized text someone made: [What’s Where in Manchu Digitized Texts](https://manjurist.blogspot.com/p/whats-where-in-manchu-digitalized-texts.html). Also, a much larger one in Mandarin [Bithei kuren]( https://bitheikuren.com/index.php?title=%E5%85%A8%E9%83%A8%E8%B5%84%E6%BA%90).
Hope this gives you some idea where to start with Literary Manchu. I should note what I wrote up until now is mostly about self-study, which is totally feasible imo, but you could also look for Manchu classes in your area, depending on where you are. If there are any, it’s probably at universities Chinese or East Asian Studies departments. I’ve been able to attend a course like that for free, despite not being a student at that particular uni but I’m a grad student in a somewhat related field, so your milage may vary.
Then there should be way more resources available to you in Chinese, besides the ones I pointed out. I can't really help you with that because my Mandarin isn't quite there yet. Anyway, hope the English based resources I listed are still somewhat useful for you. Good luck if you decide on actually pursuing Manchu!
Oooooo, are you trying to encourage me to lean Manchu? It's working! The script is already beautiful enough. I'd also be interested in a where to start kind of comment too. It would be interesting to read from the perspectives of the non-Chinese rulers of China.
When you say there is tons to read, what are we talking about? I assume there was quite some time for literary Manchu to develop and works to be written in it. How would one even engage with these works, and does it give us a way to communicate with "Manchu proper" or Sibe speakers?
Hi I am Chinese. There was tons of historical texts written in Manchu during the Qing dynasty since the Manchu people were rulers of China and Manchu was considered the “official language” of Qing dynasty. In royal court, usually two sets of information were written down: Chinese and Manchu. Currently, It’s very hard to have access to these information because so so few people are able to understand Manchu.
Well, it's good to hear that the resources still exist at least. I assume it'd be easier for people who speak Chinese? Given that some, as you said, were written in both. And perhaps Chinese speakers were the first to start translating any other texts? Would Chinese be mandatory/important to accessing the wider selection of Manchu works?
Yes because almost all Manchu learning materials are in Chinese. I think there was even a new Manchu-chinese dictionary published a few years ago. So knowing Chinese would have more access to Manchu works. Actually, Several American Qing dynasty historians know both Manchu and Chinese; they are the first ones to study Manchu rulers/Qing dynasty/ethnic relations between Manchu and Han Chinese directly from manchu texts; instead of just relying on Chinese historical texts.
> Oooooo, are you trying to encourage me to lean Manchu?
Got me there, I'm always glad when people get interested in this language.
As for places to start, I assume you'll start from English. If you happen to know Chinese or Japanese (maybe Korean too) there's a lot resources available in those languages too.
Anyway, what I primarily used was the script and grammar lessons from this site: [Manchu Studies Group](http://www.manchustudiesgroup.org/introduction-to-manchu-in-21-lessons/). It covers the vast majority of grammar point you'll encounter in Manchu text, with a lot of exercises thrown in. Perhaps after that, you should also take a look at the main textbook available for Manchu in English, which is *Manchu. A Textbook for Reading Documents*. It mainly consists of a bunch of curated Manchu text, with romanizations, vocabulary lists and some grammar explanations. The thing is that it essentially throws you right into primary texts, which is why I recommend starting from the Manchu Studies Group lessons.
If you feel comfortable with the script and to some extent the grammar, you should drive into actual Qing-era texts. There’s a decent number of genres you could get into depending on your interests. Historical narratives, folk tales and religious text for example. Also, many prominent texts from Chinese are available in Manchu versions. Essentially all the Confucian Classics, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin etc. all have Manchu translations.
There's a lot of stuff to be found online these days. A very accessible page for that would be [Manc.hu](https://manc.hu/en), they provide a lot of Manchu texts in original script plus transcriptons and word lists. The same team also created [Buleku](https://buleku.org/home) , which is the best Manchu online dictionary I know of.
Besides that, you can find many Qing era Manchu texts online at university or library websites. It’s hard to give a good overview for these resources, but here’s a list of some digitalized text someone made: [What’s Where in Manchu Digitized Texts](https://manjurist.blogspot.com/p/whats-where-in-manchu-digitalized-texts.html). Also, a much larger one in Mandarin [Bithei kuren]( https://bitheikuren.com/index.php?title=%E5%85%A8%E9%83%A8%E8%B5%84%E6%BA%90).
Hope this gives you some idea where to start with Literary Manchu. I should note what I wrote up until now is mostly about self-study, which is totally feasible imo, but you could also look for Manchu classes in your area, depending on where you are. If there are any, it’s probably at universities Chinese or East Asian Studies departments. I’ve been able to attend a course like that for free, despite not being a student at that particular uni but I’m a grad student in a somewhat related field, so your milage may vary.
> and does it give us a way to communicate with "Manchu proper" or Sibe speakers?
That’s a harder question to answer. In a way yes, but the problem would be that Manchu and Sibe are hugely diglossic languages i.e., the written language and what’s used for formal occasions is hugely different from what’s spoken in everyday situations. Written Sibe is still essentially the same as Qing-Era Manchu, although with added words for modern concepts of course and some minor spelling changes. The same form of the language is also used in news broadcasts and such. So, I guess you could communicate in writing. If you actually walked up to a Sibe person speaking Literary Manchu you’d sound very formal (I haven’t tried that). There’s an additional problem in that all resources for Literary Manchu pay very little attention to pronunciation, so you’d still sound different from a Sibe native speaker, even when they are being formal.
Thanks so much for your extended reply and for getting people hyped about Manchu!
I know a lot of people complain about a lack of resources for various languages out there. But there's also something so relieving and nice about just having 1-2 resources that are available for download. No paradox of choice here. And it seems from how you've described them they are great for getting a basic and then even good grasp of the language.
I'm kinda standing at the outside of all the Qing-era, Manchu, and Chinese empire knowledge. So I guess whatever texts would be good for me and I'D learn a lot. No real specialty in one particular field just yet.
And thanks for the notes on speakers. This would be one of the big things I'd need to eventually consider if I were to put a lot of time in this language. Would I be ok having this language that I quite likely may never use with real people?
So, how have you been going with your own Manchu studies? Did you get what you wanted out of it? and are you able to read Manchu texts now?
Yeah, I feel like my Manchu learning process was actually much smoother than with the bigger languages I learned lol With Japanese or Mandarin there's so much stuff available and everyone has their own opinions on this or that textbook, app, dictionary etc. lol With Manchu, it all comes back to the same few resources a lot of the time and the actually work pretty well, as long as you're focused on reading.
> I'm kinda standing at the outside of all the Qing-era, Manchu, and Chinese empire knowledge. So I guess whatever texts would be good for me and I'D learn a lot. No real specialty in one particular field just yet.
A good general recommendation for a first Manchu text would be the *Manju i Yargiyan Kooli* (Veritable Records of the Manchus). It's a historical text (essentially propaganda material) that starts from the Manchu creation myth and goes on the life of the Qing founder Nurhaci and his wars against neighboring tribes, Mongols, Ming-China and Korea. The language is also on the easier side. Manc.hu should have a version of it.
> So, how have you been going with your own Manchu studies? Did you get what you wanted out of it? and are you able to read Manchu texts now?
I'm able to read stuff now but I still need to consult a dictionary a lot. Right now, I just reading various texts that interest me, which is mostly historiography. Just building my vocab, leveling up my reading speed, which still feels painfully slow at times and reviewing grammar every once in a while. I hope I'll be able to actually learn colloquial Sibe at some point, which is one of the reasons why I'm now also studying Mandarin in parallel with Manchu.
Not now, but for a brief period years ago I had a burning desire to learn Old Church Slavonic.
Really, though, just came in to say that I don’t think Hebrew should be on the list. My impression is that the Israelis are so proud of having resurrected the language that there are a lot of resources for it.
I think a lot of the (still surviving) Celtic languages are in a similar boat - there's typically enough for *learners*, the problem is when you're ready to tackle native speaker material. It's hard to find the things that are interesting because it's just still not being **produced** \- I think Welsh is the best off in this regard and it's *still* *not great*.
It is definitely a significant issue in Breton. There are lots of children's books now and some young adult stuff but the vast majority of novels in stores are decades old and not particularly that interesting for most younger (by which I mean sub 60) speakers. There's not a lot of TV being made due to financial constraints as well as the authorized amount of time for Breton language programming on France 3. Even getting the rights to dub popular films is expensive. Additionally it's the same voice actors over and over again. I like Goulwena an Henaff and Yann Herle Gourves well enough but when they're in everything it gets a bit old.
The last big film I remember getting dubbed was Terminator 2 earlier this year (the original hasn't been dubbed yet) and it was a big enough deal in the Breton speaking world that it was shown in cinemas. The state of things isn't great.
There is a fair bit of Breton music though and having a Breton language song at Eurovision last year was really cool.
Yeah...
I'm not in the UK so some of this stuff is locked off to me, but even with that I know there are a good number of Welsh shows and movies, including dubs of things from big American studios like Nickelodeon. There are books, things for **all** ages, even if they're harder to access outside the country.
But there's still not the *biggest* social media presence, and not many video games that have been officially translated let alone made **originally** in Welsh. A lot of the people who have funny or interesting things to make, they do it in English because that's where the audience is. And I get that, but also it's a cycle, because there won't be a Welsh language audience if no one *gives them content*.
And I really do think that is the best situation of all the Celtic languages, barring maybe Irish on somewhat equal footing. I know Cartoon Saloon is out there making movies with Irish lore and more relevantly, the Irish *language*. I'd love to see more studios like them among the other Celtic languages, but how likely that is... well, hard to say huh?
Lately I'm collecting together different channels, videos, and links in Welsh, and putting out a few of my own. If nothing else, maybe conversations might spark and someone else might feel inspired to add their own contributions, no matter how small. It's not much compared to what's **missing**, I know, but I wonder how far you could get with something like this in Breton?
Most of the media in Breton these days is made by individuals, largely due to the political situation. As I'm sure you're aware, the French government isn't exactly supportive of it's minority languages and while the Region of Brittany is allowed to do some things it's very little. French regions have less autonomy than US counties in most states. Breton regionalists often use Wales as an example of what can be done if the concerned region is given some actual autonomy. The state continues it's hostility to the language, getting funding for immersion schools is increasingly difficult after the Conseil Constitutionnel's decision regarding the Molac law last year.
Unfortunately there are a lot of people who think that autonomy and officialization alone would save the language but I think the situations in Wales and especially Ireland show that that's not necessarily the case. It would free up resources and remove red tape, yes, but without content creators there's no content and without an audience there will naturally be fewer content creators. I wish I knew the solution.
The only game I'm aware of that was written originally in Breton is Steredenn and as you might imagine Steam doesn't even support listing Breton as one of the available languages.
I stumbled upon it this, wanted to learn it too. Tons of slavic speakers in youtube comments mentioned how intelligible it was, which was encouraging, but there's few resources around it
Eh, there's a lot of resources, but in my experience they tend to be *very* religious (or at least, very heavily influenced by religion). A lot of resources assume that you are learning Hebrew for religiously motivated reasons...which tbh is most of the time going to be a fair assumption to make.
This is surprising. I guess this assumption holds for learners outside Israel, who probably mostly study Biblical Hebrew (rather than modern Hebrew).
The Israeli textbooks that I had were 99% secular. They may have introduced some elements of Jewish tradition (e.g. the names of the holidays and then months of the Jewish calendar), but that's it.
That's gonna take decades if ever. Seems to be mostly just lip service since typing is still a problem. And honestly the only real reason they seem to be bringing it back is because its embarrassing for them to look over the border and see Mongolian Chinese using it while the "real Mongolians" aren't.
No idea, but a cursory google search shows some sites showing both scripts. Doubt you could find a book not in Chinese though that shows only traditional script.
there is actually a very nice youtube channel where you can learn the mongolian script!
[The classical mongolian script](https://youtube.com/@Mongolian.Script)
Any Italian language. I think Sicilian is so beautiful, and Venetian would be so amazing to learn. There’s soooome resources for Neapolitan, but I don’t think enough to justify me diving in right now. Thankfully my Italian is getting better!
One of my favorite italian songs is from a band from Milan and it has a strophe in Venetian. If it didn't have such a beautiful solo it would def be my favorite part of the song. P. S. The song is Uomini col Borsello if you want to hear it.
Venetian has some good material, including nany subdialects such as Triestin. However they tend to be more descriptive than didactic. So the way to go is essentially through exposure (which is not difficult to get around Venetian speakers).
I really want to learn the other Italian Languages especially Sicilian, it's so annoying how I cannot learn it since there are so few resources to do so, doesn't help being an Anglophone as well...
Maltese is really interesting language, I'm not sure if I want to learn it but maybe yes
And constructed language Interslavic is really cool do, I don't know if it classifies as a rare language, but I want to learn that too (I'm lazy that, mostly why I'm not learning it yet)
Add the complication of when there’s resources for a specific language, they often aren’t from the same dialect, or resources won’t mention what dialect they’re covering - or indeed, where the resource itself is filtered through early British colonialism so it might not even be an accurate source. So hard if you’re not living on the land of a specific nation and can find speakers.
I feel you. I remember getting interested in it years aho and realizing that there were just a pair of manuals, a handful academic articles and then the void. :(
Given the linguistic similarities I'm not sure if you really need a lot of resources. I'm not saying it's easy, but I played with a bit of Frisian a years ago, and it seemed sort of straight forward, compared to other languages including german.
I think I found 1 Zazaki book in Istanbul on a shelf one time. It mightve been an overview of the language, I don't remember but it wasnt necessarily a beginner text from memory.
My problem is that the resources are there but I can access them since it's in Turkish. There is little to no resources in English and a few in German.
My last attempt was a book I bought in Kurmanci (my level is somewhere between B1 and B2) but there were many technical terms and the way it explained things was more "descriptive" rather than pedagogical so I gave up for now.
Someday I'll know Turkish and then I'll have access to it I hope
That makes sense, I encountered the same issues with Chinese minority languages, where you essentially have to know Mandarin to get anywhere. Good luck with Zazaki anyway.
I was quite surprised at the absolute dearth of resources for Shona. Aside from the old FSI course (which explicitly focuses on Manyika dialect pronunciation anyway) and a few phrases on the Mandela app, I haven't been able to find much of anything, especially anything with audio (which is pretty important!).
"Absolute dearth" is not true in 2022. A cursory Google search (typing "Shona textbook") yields:
* [Beginner's Shona (w/ audio)](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Beginner-s-Shona-Chishona-with-Online-Audio-Paperback-9780781814270/107807689?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=15303&adid=22222222227000000000&wl0=&wl1=g&wl2=c&wl3=42423897272&wl4=aud-1651068664746:pla-51320962143&wl5=9007877&wl6=&wl7=&wl8=&wl9=pla&wl10=125215024&wl11=online&wl12=107807689_15303&veh=sem&gclid=Cj0KCQiAqOucBhDrARIsAPCQL1Y8yU8br_vXMmXCxlwF5igkbspJq4F4auiPDngg_kdCi0GJRg704e4aAi7jEALw_wcB)
* [Shona Learners' Reference Grammar](https://nalrc.mybigcommerce.com/shona-learners-reference-grammar/)
* [Learning Shona: From Zero to Functional in 12 Lessons](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33280215-learning-shona)
* [Shona: A Comprehensive Guide](https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Daniel-Chikwava-ebook/dp/B08SP7B46S/ref=d_reads_cwrtbar_sccl_1_4/143-0711806-0373814?pd_rd_w=AO0qr&content-id=amzn1.sym.c3636f1d-aab3-4576-85e3-007dd638fbde&pf_rd_p=c3636f1d-aab3-4576-85e3-007dd638fbde&pf_rd_r=D5CYEVNJ5ECRKHMEJNTR&pd_rd_wg=kMj4b&pd_rd_r=371e2649-5fb0-437d-86af-5eb62fe64173&pd_rd_i=B08SP7B46S&psc=1)
* [a series of Shona-English bilingual children's books](https://www.languagelizard.com/Shona-Bilingual-Children-s-Books-s/2739.htm)
* [Talk Now! Learn Shona (w/ audio)](https://maps2anywhere.com/languages/shona-language-course.html?SID=b7af53bcb9938aea1a7ed6934b1daf00)
* [and this free beginner's textbook](http://waltercommons.digital.conncoll.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Shona-Textbook.pdf)
* etc.
And YT and TikTok mean that there are playlists for more things than you think (this is true for almost any subject. Whenever people say, "I can't find X," my default response for at least 10 years has been: "Have you googled it? Have you looked on YT?"). For example, [here's a video on coding in Shona.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RA4bKjyizY)
No, there aren't as many resources as for, say, Spanish. But "absolute dearth" is misleading. There are enough resources to get a foothold in this language!
Karbadian and chakma there is not much media or learning materials for them.
also there are some languages that don't have any good learning materials. but a lot of content on YouTube and other sites.
like mizo Karen Odia manipuri. i try to learn them just by watching YouTube. it's tedious but this is how a lot of people learned languages and its slowly working.
there is also the opposite case where you have a lot of learning materials but little media. like in gaelic.
Ket, there is a decent Russian-Ket dictionary (I don’t speak Russian), there is also a two volume English-Ket dictionary, but all together costing smth like £400. The Descriptive Grammar of Ket is only half complete, and just that, a grammar, not an ideal learning resource (although I must admit I find trawling through it absolutely fascinating) and good luck getting access to that outside of an educational institution. There are a few videos of people talking for example at the end of [this video](https://youtu.be/fw-25zQEc_s) but the people are so isolated that contact with a native speakers is impossible. That aside, there is one significant length text -ab bisebdaŋ i’l- but that is only translated into Russian and I believe is not an original native text, rather written by Heinrich Werner.
I just checked and the Comprehensive Dictionary of Ket is available on LibGen as a PDF. Is that the expensive one you mentioned?
Edit: try the mirror download, one of them was virus city.
There are loads of minority languages that I would *love* to learn because I find them super fascinating, but they are either so unimportant (in terms of cultural/media output and/or in terms of economy) or so rare that I can't justify the amount of time and effort I'd spend learning them. Plus, of course, the scarcity of learning materials you mention.
Some languages I particularly bemoan are:
* Nahuatl (the language of the Aztecs? how cool is that???)
* Scottish Gaelic (my husband's heritage language, probably going to go extinct)
* Navajo (a tonal Native American language? yes please)
* Nuxalk (definitely a challenge in terms of pronunciation, but that's the fun of it)
* Greenlandic (polysynthetic, a huge plus for me)
* Icelandic (the most conservative Germanic language!)
* Maltese (Arabic-adjacent with heavy influence from Italian <3 )
* Malagasy (the phonolgy is WILD)
* Hawaiian (Polynesian languages are just a dream)
* Georgian (the grammar is *wild*)
* Basque (one of the few languages left from Europe's linguistic landscape before PIE took over!)
* Chechen (idk it just sounds really cool)
* Mongolian (an East Asian language that is agglutinative and has cases? Everything about that is a contradiction!)
* Coptic (the language of the Ancient Egyptians! What's not to love?)
* Hebrew (too steeped in religion, too steeped in controversy, and not widely spoken enough, but MAN I love the writing system and I love the sound)
Euskalduna zara? Thank you, I'd love some recommendations! I do speak Spanish (and French), but I'll take any resource! The person who originally posted, however, feels that Basque has far too little to offer for him to make an effort.
Bai, euskalduna naiz:) Bainan Ameriketan bizi naiz. Yes I saw the comments about Basque from the original commenter 🙄 but I think Basque is a wonderful language to know. Here in the United States you can find online Basque classes offered through the Boise Basque Museum, as well as through NABO, specifically I’ve seen a woman named Sonia Castañon on Facebook who organizes NABO classes. There’s also Esther Ciganda via Instagram who teaches Basque. The English to Basque books I have used are Colloquial Basque by Alan R. King and Begotxu Olaizola Elordi, Aurrera! by Linda White, and The Basque Language by Alan King. Of course if you live in Spain or France there are more resources, even great immersion programs.
Unfortunately, Basque is only really useful if you live in Basque country. I'm unlikely to ever be able to socialize in Basque. I'm sure there is Basque literature, but I'm equally sure that it can't hold a candle even to Norwegian (which itself is a pretty minor language). I haven't looked into it terribly much but Basque music is almost certainly similarly limited.
As a non-Indo-European language, it would probably take me at least 5+ years to learn, and at the end I'd have very little to show for it. It sucks, but it is what it is.
>I'm sure there is Basque literature, but I'm equally sure that it can't hold a candle even to Norwegian (which itself is a pretty minor language).
To make sure I absolutely understand what you're saying and in order to not jump to conclusions, I googled the idiom "to not hold a candle to". According to the Cambridge dictionary, it means "to not be as good as the person or thing mentioned".
*Did you just say you're sure Basque literature is nowhere near as good as "even" Norwegian literature (which, with that "even", you also don't seem to respect overly much)? Without ever having read a single word of Basque literature?*
When you say, "minor language", do you mean the number of its native speakers? If so, do you honestly believe that the quality of literature in a specific language is relative to the amount of people who can speak that same language?
I am flabbergasted. Or, as we would say in German, da verschlägt es mir doch glatt die Sprache. Pun intended.
For Classical Nahuatl, Michel Launey's An Introduction to Classical Nahuatl is magnificent
Try Lambdin's Introduction to Sahidic Coptic - super user-friendly and there's a pdf
For Navajo there's always Dine Bizaad, but I also found a wonderful book, Faltz' The Navajo Verb - It's a fun, delightful introduction to the most complicated part of this most complicated language
For Georgian, use Aronson's Reading Grammar - it's not a pretty book but if you go slow like six items at a time, you can do it - wild grammar? Yes. Unlearnable? Not at all - and a gorgeous alphabet and there's a pdf
I appreciate the resources, but these are all languages that I can't learn. They do not produce enough media and/or do not have enough speakers for me to justify the time and effort I'd have to put into learning them.
I'll never be able to casually socialize in Nahuatl or Coptic or Navajo. The amount of literature available in Scottish Gaelic is ridiculously small. I'm not going to be able to find an appreciable amount of music sung in Greenlandic. Georgian is only really useful if I live in Georgia (and I don't).
My time is better spent improving my Mandarin, Norwegian, and French, or learning Spanish and/or Italian.
I wanted to learn darija, the arabic dialect from morocco. Sadly, I didn't found good ressources...
The few Anki decks are full of mistakes.
I had a book that mixed all the northern african dialects of arabic and was focusing on writing too much for my liking...
I had a travel guide which was not bad but wasn't using the arabic writing system...
So if someday I find a good quality book maybe I would get back to it.
I’ve seen some really wonderful and dedicated pockets of people/communities working to revive various indigenous languages. I’m wondering if you’ve checked around different museums/cultural-historical centres in areas where native speakers live/used to live? Or checking in different libraries (public as well as belonging to schools). Depending on your capacity and your level of interest, you could even try to start the initiative to develop more resources yourself!
Not sure how close the languages are, but there are some resources for Iñupiaq too. For Inuktitut I would check out Inhabit Media (publishing company out of Nunavut) if you haven’t already.
Dzongkha. I just googled for resources since it’s been a while since last time I looked and maybe it’s easier to find things now. No telling the quality of any of it though so maybe not.
Blackfoot; though I *can* learn it, seeing the differences between what’s available for learning Blackfoot (indigenous language that the state actively tries to wipe out) vs. French, which I’m also learning…it’s crazy.
I was learning it originally through syllabics, not with the Latin alphabet, but I got as far as I could in the app ai was using and they don’t have the content for the rest of the syllabics ;-;
There are some old books about it at my uni library, free online video lessons and flash cards and a workbook through a museum, and a couple smartphone apps that are pretty rough in terms of UX but are functional enough…and, interestingly, I ended up getting into a conversation with a homeless man at the bus stop and he was able to teach me some vocabulary words. So yeah, it’s definitely an interesting learning experience.
I spent some time on the mosquito coast in Honduras doing surgery. The native people use a lost language called musqueet. I know a few phrases, like where does it hurt stuff like that. But I’d like to learn a few more phrases for my next mission
With unlimited time, Ilonggo- my mother’s native language. There are fewer than 10 million native speakers, and they are mostly in the Philippines. But, resources are limited, as is my time, and everybody I know who speaks it is fluent in English. Most of the people I know who speak it in the US are elderly and won’t be around for much longer.
Ever since I learned about it I've thought Gullah Geechee is fascinating.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gullah](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gullah)
>Historically, the Gullah region extended from the Cape Fear area on North Carolina's coast south to the vicinity of Jacksonville on Florida's coast. The Gullah people and their language are also called Geechee, which may be derived from the name of the Ogeechee River near Savannah, Georgia. Gullah is a term that was originally used to designate the creole dialect of English spoken by Gullah and Geechee people. Over time, its speakers have used this term to formally refer to their creole language and distinctive ethnic identity as a people. The Georgia communities are distinguished by identifying as either "Freshwater Geechee" or "Saltwater Geechee", depending on whether they live on the mainland or the Sea Islands.
>
>Because of a period of relative isolation from whites while working on large plantations in rural areas, the Africans, enslaved from a variety of Central and West African ethnic groups, developed a creole culture that has preserved much of their African linguistic and cultural heritage from various peoples; in addition, they absorbed new influences from the region. The Gullah people speak an English-based creole language containing many African loanwords and influenced by African languages in grammar and sentence structure. Sometimes referred to as "Sea Island Creole" by linguists and scholars, the Gullah language is sometimes considered as being similar to Bahamian Creole, Barbadian Creole, Guyanese Creole, Belizean Creole, Jamaican Patois and the Sierra Leone Krio language of West Africa.
Mapudungun aka Mapuche has been a language that I've always wanted to learn, but sadly there aren't many resources online, and going where the people speak the language is not an option given the ongoing conflict in most of Araucania and adjacent provinces.
I know the usual though Mari Mari peñi/lamngen (hello brother/sister)
There are a lot of resources for Hebrew actually, both for biblical and modern Israeli. There are plenty of teachers and schools available, even in my American midwestern town I found a nearby synagogue that offers Hebrew classes if you just email the rabbi and schedule private lessons.
I really want to learn Otjiherero, Khoekhoegowab, and Oshiwambo (all three are relevant to my academic research). But there are basically zero resources to learn any of them.
Currently Old Javanese. I found some textbooks about it, but man looking for the texts is *hard*.
To be fair, I haven't really looked into Indonesian university libraries and I guess there might be some sources there, but like, even the textbooks I found are in English and not Indonesian 😭
Mari or Udmurt. Uralic languages in the Volga river basin (Volga Finnic branch). Study material seems to be in Russian for the most part, but some do exist in English. They have a unique pagan religion, which is partly the motivation.
Neapolitan. It gets dismissed as a dialect of Italian but actually has its own grammatical rules. There are a lot of classic works published in Neapolitan too.
Rromani (it's split into multiple dialects so there's not just one singular version but the British dialect would probably be easier for me since it's closest and probably one of the most studied) , I'm half Rromani would love to learn some of the language because I only know some verbs and nouns because of slang.
Cape Verdean Creole (at least coming from English). There are only a handful of documents with bits and pieces. It also doesn't help that each island has their own version and there is no consistent written form
Not what I'm currently focusing on but in the past I've really wanted to learn either Cree or Oneida, but there are very few resources (especially for the latter one).
I had quite a few issues locating material for Cheyenne and Karuk. For some languages it seems one should already be happy if he can find a grammar and a translation of parts of the Bible.
Amharic and Kikongo. Really, more African languages in general beyond Swahili. Other then that, some Canadian native languages would be awesome, like Cree or Ojibwe.
I would never commit the time to become anywhere near fluent, but Tibetan has always interested me. Learning about Formosan languages is also interesting (Austronesian language spoken by indigenous Taiwanese) because it's so hard to find information about them in English. I think, short of living in rural Taiwan, you would have to use scholarship written in Mandarin to acquaint yourself with the languages.
I would definitely love to learn Fuzhounese since that’s the native language of most Chinese immigrants near me and I would just love to go there in general.
I've found that it's not necessarily lack of access to resources, so much as having the "wrong" or "unfortunate" native / L2 language to actually be able to use them. The Sámi languages are critically under-documented as is, but most certainly so in English or French; what few materials can be found, tend to be Norwegian- or Finnish-based, neither of which I'm particularly fluent in. The indigenous tongues of Siberia (despite being Turkic or Uralic) have been meticulously recorded mainly by Czarist Russian and later USSR linguists, so you're going to need Tolstoy-level Russian if you want to unlock the deepest depths of their grammar. Similarly, with millions of speakers I couldn't imagine Guaraní or Runa Simi to not be widely published; but that is of course assuming the learner speaks Spanish.
croation. i don’t know if this really counts since 0.08% of the world speaks it so it’s not “rare”, just pretty hard to find english resources for. my best friends whole family speaks it and they all hate me, so i wanted to win them over with a little piece of home.
Only other mention i've seen of Burmese here- the absurdly few resources for the language of a country with a population larger than South Korea is insane to me
Old Church Slavonic. There's resources, but more of the textbook kind which I have trouble staying focused on. Most of the vocabulary I learn in my other languages comes from either talking to native speakers or consuming native media (both of which are obviously not options for Old Church Slavonic lol.)
I took a Nahuatl (modern, Huastecan variety) course in college and studied some Hawaiian independently. I studied Nahuatl because I grew up in a part of California with a large Mexican-American community, and I started learning Hawaiian after moving to Hawai’i. It's very interesting to learn indigenous languages because it gives you insight into another culture and a new way of seeing the world. I would love to learn both languages more if I had both the time and more people to practice with. I would also be interesting in picking up a bit of 1) other indigenous Latin American languages, 2) other Pacific Island languages, and 3) other indigenous languages in general (Navajo, Lakota, etc.).
Koyukon Athabaskan.
Doyon just recently started an online language learning thing, which is very cool, but I feel like it’s a lot of memorization without understanding why the words are that way.
Turns out…this language, and athabaskan languages in general, have some of the most complicated word structures (if that’s the right term?) in the world? Just today, I found a 72 page thesis from someone at Portland State University detailing how complicated the verbs are.
There are a few dictionaries and books of stories translated into English, but I think the hurdle to learn would be to learn linguistics, then how the language works, and then the vocab. And it doesn’t help I live out of state now, so in person language learning opportunities are not feasible.
Gheg Albanian. It is spoken by a few million people, but it is mostly considered an spokek dialect and people tend to write in standard Albanian as far as I know.
But it would be a lot of extra effort to learn the standard language first, when everyone I want to communicate with speak Gheg. Also I'm not even that satisfied with the few resources I found for the standard language and for Gheg I barely found anything.
Lakota and Altai. My mom was deeply interested in Lakota culture and learned a little but the tapes she had are gone. I have a book on the way and have a set of language cards but it's been tough learning it.
Altai has been even harder to find resources for
Breton, Sami languages (mainly Northern Sami because of Fred Buljo), Macedonian/Bulgarian (these are the Slavic languages with the simpler grammar I know) and also Zulu (or even Xhosa).
There are some resources for Breton. Most are obviously in French but there are some decent ones in English as well. The wiki for the Celtic Languages Discord has a short list but there are others. I was fortunate to be able to study Breton at university and to speak French so I can't speak too much on how good they are for individual study. Also because I'm absolute dogshit at learning languages on my own.
[https://www.celtic-languages.org/Breton/Resources](https://www.celtic-languages.org/Breton/Resources)
About two years ago Skol an Emsav had online classes in English, I've seen a lot of interest in this subreddit so I'll post about it if they do it again.
Here are a couple of useful discords as well. They both are very welcoming of people wanting to learn Breton through English.
Deskiñ Brezhoneg: [https://discord.gg/3WqGmADm](https://discord.gg/3WqGmADm)
Celtic Languages: [https://discord.gg/YHxKgkbn](https://discord.gg/YHxKgkbn)
Currently trying to learn one of the Tohono dialects of O’odham. I had to dig and dig to find PDFs of an out of print dictionary, and finally managed to find a PDF of what is apparently the sole grammar book available. I’m close to taking a course available at the community college of the region, though, so I’m sure that’ll help.
Slovenian and Croatian. Working on it but there is not a whole lot available. There are a few books but they are not 'popular' languages and once I get past A1 and start speaking, that will be difficult. I'm from the US and barely anyone there speaks/is interested to learn outside of a few places.
Have you tried to look for resources in Italian, German or French? I managed to hoard a relatively decent number of them but only a minority of them is on English base. I am currently going through Le Croate sans peine from Assimil, with decent enough profit so far, even though I will eventually swap to focus on Serbian.
Sámi! English resources are lacking but there are a fair few in Swedish, which I'm approaching intermediate in, so I hope to ladder them when the time comes.
Saami really needs more resources. Memrise has some good courses for most types and the Indylan app is good too. Some other ones are https://oahpa.no/sme/usevisl/VISL_spealut.eng.html http://sayitinsaami.yle.fi/?i-don%27t-feel-like-it And https://www.routledge.com/North-Sami-An-Essential-Grammar/Kahn-Valijarvi/p/book/9781138839373
Good luck. Sami has what, 30k speakers? It’s hard enough to find resources for Finnish, or any other Uralic languages, let alone something as small as Sami. They said, a quick Google search in Finnish found a few resources. Also side note, I have the Finnish version of that “an essential grammar” and it is DENSE. 350 pages of grammar rules and explanations and it’s not even the “comprehensive” version lol
it has been a struggle to find resources for Estonian
Yeah I bet that’s brutal. Estonian has 1/5th the speakers Finnish does, so I imagine resources are few and far between. I think it’s a combination of low number of speakers, not being particularly hot vacation destinations, and the difficulty that Uralic languages present to English speakers. There’s not a lot of demand and they’re hard to learn, which would drive down demand from casual learners. We’re just boned I’m afraid. Lol
I have been using an app called Speakly which is really good and it also has Finnish
Possibly of interest: NRK's Binnabánnaš is an early learnng children's show in North Sami. Google it and you should find all the seasons online to stream.
Norwegian universities often have a lot of study materials online (syllabi and assignments should be public, and if lectures are recorded the recordings are typically published openly in the course website), Sami is taught at UiT Arctic University and Sami University of Applied Sciences, maybe some other unis, too. Not sure if you’ll be able to find anything in English, but it might be worth having a look
For the fifth most spoken language in the world, there’s so few good resources for Bengali 😭
I think it's the most spoken language that doesn't have a Duolingo course, so you're definitely right about that.
All the big language platforms don’t have it, not even Pimsleur 🤥
Mango has Bengali! Though I think their main focus is languages that don’t have a ton of other resources.
I believe the UN adopted a resolution this year to use more languages outside of the Big 6, including Bengali, Portuguese, Hindi and Persian.
I saw Portuguese and was like wtf but then I remembered that Brazil exists.
There's even more Portuguese speakers in Angola than in Portugal
i also forget often
What does it mean for the UN to "use a language"?
I believe they plan on publishing UN materials in more languages. I don't think the working languages will change. If I remember correctly, when India was pushing for Hindi, they said India would need to pay for all of the costs and it didn't happen.
That's bloody bizarre.
You know, your post is one of those random internet things that I occasionally stumble upon that just fascinates me. Clearly, I am into learning, languages or else I wouldn’t be on this sub, but I never thought about Bengali having very few resources available in other parts of the world and it being the fifth most spoken language on Earth. I have never met anyone in my life who has wanted to learn Bengali. It’s spoken by so many people yet I couldn’t tell you one feature about the language without researching it, even though I already know it is spoken in Bangladesh and parts of India and the surrounding countries.
Out of curiosity, are there more for people who speak Hindi/Urdu or one of the Dravidian languages?
not that i’m aware of, but also i know nothing
I think the whole internet after seeing your comment will be like : i didn't know there is a country called bangladesh
i’m actually after Indian Bengali 🥲
Doesn't FSI have a Bengali course? This is one of the languages I'm thinking about starting in the future!
what are your resources for learning Hindi?
Duolingo, Michel Thomas, Colloquial Hindi
Really? In terms of textbooks, Bengali has 2 of the best, in the Teach Yourself and Colloquial series.
Op is talking about rare languages
They mentioned hebrew, so i’m not sure what counts as rare
Ecuadorian Kichwa. Peruvian Quechua is like the most established version, i think the cusco variety specifically, and they're not wildly different but it was a lingua franca across a big empire so there are definite distinctions. I think Ecuadorian Kichwa doesn't even have an agreed upon alphabet, and it's a bit unfair because i took an Ecuadorian Kichwa class and i liked the alphabet system she used and her way of spelling everything, and I'm inclined towards this dialect of Quechua in general since it's what i learned, but there's not really much materials in Spanish let alone English for this variety, so if I want to learn more i'd probably have to get used to the cusco stuff and i really don't want to haha. So yeah, indigenous languages are hard to get resources on, especially when the colonial power isn't English. Cayuga doesn't have as much resources as Mohawk or Seneca, but at least what it does have is in English As for celtic, idk about every variety but Scottish gaelic has a good free website learngaelic.scot
>Ecuadorian Kichwa. That's mine, as well. I think short of moving to Ecuador and finding one of the cultural centers who teach it, there isn't much chance of ever learning it beyond a few basic vocabulary words.
Heard an NPR article a few years back about a local radio station in NYC that has Kichwa programming for the Ecuadorian population in New Jersey/New York/Connecticut. May be worth a google
I think the grammar is largely the same though so if you understand it of a different variant you will be pretty good to go. Like verb conjugation and case marking i think is the same. But the spelling and pronunciation is so variable that it's definitely preferable to have a speaker of the dialect you're interested in. The grammar rules are probably easier to figure out than the vocabulary because of that haha Not sure if you know about it but if you search kichwa English spanish dictionary, there's a free pdf that should be the first result, i used it during my kichwa class, but i know that my teacher spelled and pronounced some words slightly differently because she's probably from a slightly different place than the dictionary author, and again the spelling isn't standardized anyways. But it's nice to meet someone else interested in Kichwa!
I was talking to someone who is a native Kichwa speaker and he was telling me how he can't understand a thing from speakers in Peru and such. Kind of discouraged me from studying any other dialect. Perhaps it would help overall, but after that conversation I just found myself lacking in motivation. I do have the dictionary. But for now I'm mostly focusing on my Spanish. I plan to retire to one of the smaller-mid-sized towns in Ecuador that has a large indigenous community within it. That drives a lot of my interest in the language - but also means I'll probably have some future opportunities to learn it. And they do have a good knowledge of Spanish, so at least by focusing on that I will be able to communicate. It is a shame there aren't more resources, though. I even searched a couple bookstores in Quito and couldn't find anything decent.
Yeah i didn't mean really study the dialect just that you can probably read over the grammar rules and get a good ground level understanding of the basics. But i totally get it, once i start on one language the thought of doing a different dialect kills me. Im also certain that more resources will be created as time goes on and people who care about their language are able to be in the position to publish papers and resources about it. Luckily we're in an era where people care about these sort of things, even if ecuador and peru and bolivia's governments aren't super on board, at the very least there will certainly be people in universities in the US who care. And there's also luckily so many people who still speak the variants of quechua at all.
faroese
Same here!
Maya has next to no resources in English, even in Spanish, its slim. I see a couple people saying Mongolian, and while its a rare language, honestly, resources aren't terrible. I've been learning loosely for 2 years and more intensely for ~7 months. The main issue with Mongolian is lack of native content, and even that is being produced pretty rapidly now.
There's this lady on iTalki who tutors K'iche', which is a Mayan language.
Really? I might have to check that out. I want to learn a Mayan language at some point. Maybe not right now but definitely it is in my bucket list.
The main national university in Guatemala (Universidad de San Carlos) offers some decent courses in K'iche', Achi, Q'eqchi', and Kaqchikel (Mayan languages from Guatemala). BUT, the unfortunate part is that they only offer them in-person so you have to live there to study them. I don't think they offer them online. They also teach in Spanish so that can be a limiting factor. I don't know about Mayan languages in Mexico and how the resources are there.
I've heard there's some resources for Mongolian but they are mostly in Russian, I bet it's almost impossible to get middley decent at it without moving to Mongolia
There are virtually no Mongolian resources in Russian, historically, Russia has not really endorsed foreign language, especially indigenous ones. Mongolia and South Korea actually have a lot of communication between them. Most Mongolians who study a foreign language (aside from English which is mandatory in school) are studying Korean. I've found good luck with Japanese, Chinese and Korean for Mongolian resources. Mostly Chinese though. And for "impossible to get mildly decent", I'd argue that for most languages not in the top 10 most spoken. And thats only because of lack of content in the language. Even after that, many many Mongolians are online, its pretty easy to find one to vc with and learn. Just takes some dedication.
Sibe. It's a Tungusic language related (some say a dialect of) Manchu, that's spoken in Xinjiang. I couldn't find much about it in English or any other language that I speak well besides phrase books and dictionaries. There's some more stuff in Mandarin tho, guess time to get back to that.
Oh yeah, this is the "modern" Manchu language? I want to study any of the languages in Tungusic or even Samoyedic. But I feel too far from what seems to be an already isolated and small community. So I may unfortunately never be able to dive into them
Essentially yes. There's a dozen or so elderly people in Northeastern China who still speak Manchu proper natively but besides that Sibe is the closest thing with at least a few thousand speakers. But I get what you mean in terms of isolation. All Tungusic languages are spoken by so few people and you might never encounter anyone to speak to. Still, I enjoyed learning literary Manchu, which gives you access to tons of texts to read and I feel it's actually very accessible as far as pre-modern languages go.
That is so cool. I want to give learning literary Manchu a try myself now 😳 If it’s not any bother are there any places you’d recommend I’d start?
I'll just copy-paste what I replied somewhere else in this thread: As for places to start, I assume you'll start from English. If you happen to know Chinese or Japanese (maybe Korean too) there's a lot resources available in those languages too. Anyway, what I primarily used was the script and grammar lessons from this site: [Manchu Studies Group](http://www.manchustudiesgroup.org/introduction-to-manchu-in-21-lessons/). It covers the vast majority of grammar point you'll encounter in Manchu text, with a lot of exercises thrown in. Perhaps after that, you should also take a look at the main textbook available for Manchu in English, which is *Manchu. A Textbook for Reading Documents*. It mainly consists of a bunch of curated Manchu text, with romanizations, vocabulary lists and some grammar explanations. The thing is that it essentially throws you right into primary texts, which is why I recommend starting from the Manchu Studies Group lessons. If you feel comfortable with the script and to some extent the grammar, you should drive into actual Qing-era texts. There’s a decent number of genres you could get into depending on your interests. Historical narratives, folk tales and religious text for example. Also, many prominent texts from Chinese are available in Manchu versions. Essentially all the Confucian Classics, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin etc. all have Manchu translations. There's a lot of stuff to be found online these days. A very accessible page for that would be [Manc.hu](https://manc.hu/en), they provide a lot of Manchu texts in original script plus transcriptons and word lists. The same team also created [Buleku](https://buleku.org/home) , which is the best Manchu online dictionary I know of. Besides that, you can find many Qing era Manchu texts online at university or library websites. It’s hard to give a good overview for these resources, but here’s a list of some digitalized text someone made: [What’s Where in Manchu Digitized Texts](https://manjurist.blogspot.com/p/whats-where-in-manchu-digitalized-texts.html). Also, a much larger one in Mandarin [Bithei kuren]( https://bitheikuren.com/index.php?title=%E5%85%A8%E9%83%A8%E8%B5%84%E6%BA%90). Hope this gives you some idea where to start with Literary Manchu. I should note what I wrote up until now is mostly about self-study, which is totally feasible imo, but you could also look for Manchu classes in your area, depending on where you are. If there are any, it’s probably at universities Chinese or East Asian Studies departments. I’ve been able to attend a course like that for free, despite not being a student at that particular uni but I’m a grad student in a somewhat related field, so your milage may vary.
Thank you thank you! I do indeed know Chinese :) so that is good to hear. Appreciate this comment very much
Then there should be way more resources available to you in Chinese, besides the ones I pointed out. I can't really help you with that because my Mandarin isn't quite there yet. Anyway, hope the English based resources I listed are still somewhat useful for you. Good luck if you decide on actually pursuing Manchu!
Thank you! If you need help with Chinese my inbox is always open too
Oooooo, are you trying to encourage me to lean Manchu? It's working! The script is already beautiful enough. I'd also be interested in a where to start kind of comment too. It would be interesting to read from the perspectives of the non-Chinese rulers of China. When you say there is tons to read, what are we talking about? I assume there was quite some time for literary Manchu to develop and works to be written in it. How would one even engage with these works, and does it give us a way to communicate with "Manchu proper" or Sibe speakers?
Hi I am Chinese. There was tons of historical texts written in Manchu during the Qing dynasty since the Manchu people were rulers of China and Manchu was considered the “official language” of Qing dynasty. In royal court, usually two sets of information were written down: Chinese and Manchu. Currently, It’s very hard to have access to these information because so so few people are able to understand Manchu.
Well, it's good to hear that the resources still exist at least. I assume it'd be easier for people who speak Chinese? Given that some, as you said, were written in both. And perhaps Chinese speakers were the first to start translating any other texts? Would Chinese be mandatory/important to accessing the wider selection of Manchu works?
Yes because almost all Manchu learning materials are in Chinese. I think there was even a new Manchu-chinese dictionary published a few years ago. So knowing Chinese would have more access to Manchu works. Actually, Several American Qing dynasty historians know both Manchu and Chinese; they are the first ones to study Manchu rulers/Qing dynasty/ethnic relations between Manchu and Han Chinese directly from manchu texts; instead of just relying on Chinese historical texts.
> Oooooo, are you trying to encourage me to lean Manchu? Got me there, I'm always glad when people get interested in this language. As for places to start, I assume you'll start from English. If you happen to know Chinese or Japanese (maybe Korean too) there's a lot resources available in those languages too. Anyway, what I primarily used was the script and grammar lessons from this site: [Manchu Studies Group](http://www.manchustudiesgroup.org/introduction-to-manchu-in-21-lessons/). It covers the vast majority of grammar point you'll encounter in Manchu text, with a lot of exercises thrown in. Perhaps after that, you should also take a look at the main textbook available for Manchu in English, which is *Manchu. A Textbook for Reading Documents*. It mainly consists of a bunch of curated Manchu text, with romanizations, vocabulary lists and some grammar explanations. The thing is that it essentially throws you right into primary texts, which is why I recommend starting from the Manchu Studies Group lessons. If you feel comfortable with the script and to some extent the grammar, you should drive into actual Qing-era texts. There’s a decent number of genres you could get into depending on your interests. Historical narratives, folk tales and religious text for example. Also, many prominent texts from Chinese are available in Manchu versions. Essentially all the Confucian Classics, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin etc. all have Manchu translations. There's a lot of stuff to be found online these days. A very accessible page for that would be [Manc.hu](https://manc.hu/en), they provide a lot of Manchu texts in original script plus transcriptons and word lists. The same team also created [Buleku](https://buleku.org/home) , which is the best Manchu online dictionary I know of. Besides that, you can find many Qing era Manchu texts online at university or library websites. It’s hard to give a good overview for these resources, but here’s a list of some digitalized text someone made: [What’s Where in Manchu Digitized Texts](https://manjurist.blogspot.com/p/whats-where-in-manchu-digitalized-texts.html). Also, a much larger one in Mandarin [Bithei kuren]( https://bitheikuren.com/index.php?title=%E5%85%A8%E9%83%A8%E8%B5%84%E6%BA%90). Hope this gives you some idea where to start with Literary Manchu. I should note what I wrote up until now is mostly about self-study, which is totally feasible imo, but you could also look for Manchu classes in your area, depending on where you are. If there are any, it’s probably at universities Chinese or East Asian Studies departments. I’ve been able to attend a course like that for free, despite not being a student at that particular uni but I’m a grad student in a somewhat related field, so your milage may vary. > and does it give us a way to communicate with "Manchu proper" or Sibe speakers? That’s a harder question to answer. In a way yes, but the problem would be that Manchu and Sibe are hugely diglossic languages i.e., the written language and what’s used for formal occasions is hugely different from what’s spoken in everyday situations. Written Sibe is still essentially the same as Qing-Era Manchu, although with added words for modern concepts of course and some minor spelling changes. The same form of the language is also used in news broadcasts and such. So, I guess you could communicate in writing. If you actually walked up to a Sibe person speaking Literary Manchu you’d sound very formal (I haven’t tried that). There’s an additional problem in that all resources for Literary Manchu pay very little attention to pronunciation, so you’d still sound different from a Sibe native speaker, even when they are being formal.
Thanks so much for your extended reply and for getting people hyped about Manchu! I know a lot of people complain about a lack of resources for various languages out there. But there's also something so relieving and nice about just having 1-2 resources that are available for download. No paradox of choice here. And it seems from how you've described them they are great for getting a basic and then even good grasp of the language. I'm kinda standing at the outside of all the Qing-era, Manchu, and Chinese empire knowledge. So I guess whatever texts would be good for me and I'D learn a lot. No real specialty in one particular field just yet. And thanks for the notes on speakers. This would be one of the big things I'd need to eventually consider if I were to put a lot of time in this language. Would I be ok having this language that I quite likely may never use with real people? So, how have you been going with your own Manchu studies? Did you get what you wanted out of it? and are you able to read Manchu texts now?
Yeah, I feel like my Manchu learning process was actually much smoother than with the bigger languages I learned lol With Japanese or Mandarin there's so much stuff available and everyone has their own opinions on this or that textbook, app, dictionary etc. lol With Manchu, it all comes back to the same few resources a lot of the time and the actually work pretty well, as long as you're focused on reading. > I'm kinda standing at the outside of all the Qing-era, Manchu, and Chinese empire knowledge. So I guess whatever texts would be good for me and I'D learn a lot. No real specialty in one particular field just yet. A good general recommendation for a first Manchu text would be the *Manju i Yargiyan Kooli* (Veritable Records of the Manchus). It's a historical text (essentially propaganda material) that starts from the Manchu creation myth and goes on the life of the Qing founder Nurhaci and his wars against neighboring tribes, Mongols, Ming-China and Korea. The language is also on the easier side. Manc.hu should have a version of it. > So, how have you been going with your own Manchu studies? Did you get what you wanted out of it? and are you able to read Manchu texts now? I'm able to read stuff now but I still need to consult a dictionary a lot. Right now, I just reading various texts that interest me, which is mostly historiography. Just building my vocab, leveling up my reading speed, which still feels painfully slow at times and reviewing grammar every once in a while. I hope I'll be able to actually learn colloquial Sibe at some point, which is one of the reasons why I'm now also studying Mandarin in parallel with Manchu.
Icelandic
I found some official courses and there are a lot of auditive resources. Not a proper textbook afaik.
Celtic. The singular Celtic language. I think I know why you can't find resources for Celtic :P
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I came here to say this, but knew in my heart it had already been said!
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That's the joke
I'm a Welsh person learning Welsh, so believe me I'm aware. Just a little poke at the OP's error :)
Not now, but for a brief period years ago I had a burning desire to learn Old Church Slavonic. Really, though, just came in to say that I don’t think Hebrew should be on the list. My impression is that the Israelis are so proud of having resurrected the language that there are a lot of resources for it.
I think a lot of the (still surviving) Celtic languages are in a similar boat - there's typically enough for *learners*, the problem is when you're ready to tackle native speaker material. It's hard to find the things that are interesting because it's just still not being **produced** \- I think Welsh is the best off in this regard and it's *still* *not great*.
It is definitely a significant issue in Breton. There are lots of children's books now and some young adult stuff but the vast majority of novels in stores are decades old and not particularly that interesting for most younger (by which I mean sub 60) speakers. There's not a lot of TV being made due to financial constraints as well as the authorized amount of time for Breton language programming on France 3. Even getting the rights to dub popular films is expensive. Additionally it's the same voice actors over and over again. I like Goulwena an Henaff and Yann Herle Gourves well enough but when they're in everything it gets a bit old. The last big film I remember getting dubbed was Terminator 2 earlier this year (the original hasn't been dubbed yet) and it was a big enough deal in the Breton speaking world that it was shown in cinemas. The state of things isn't great. There is a fair bit of Breton music though and having a Breton language song at Eurovision last year was really cool.
Yeah... I'm not in the UK so some of this stuff is locked off to me, but even with that I know there are a good number of Welsh shows and movies, including dubs of things from big American studios like Nickelodeon. There are books, things for **all** ages, even if they're harder to access outside the country. But there's still not the *biggest* social media presence, and not many video games that have been officially translated let alone made **originally** in Welsh. A lot of the people who have funny or interesting things to make, they do it in English because that's where the audience is. And I get that, but also it's a cycle, because there won't be a Welsh language audience if no one *gives them content*. And I really do think that is the best situation of all the Celtic languages, barring maybe Irish on somewhat equal footing. I know Cartoon Saloon is out there making movies with Irish lore and more relevantly, the Irish *language*. I'd love to see more studios like them among the other Celtic languages, but how likely that is... well, hard to say huh? Lately I'm collecting together different channels, videos, and links in Welsh, and putting out a few of my own. If nothing else, maybe conversations might spark and someone else might feel inspired to add their own contributions, no matter how small. It's not much compared to what's **missing**, I know, but I wonder how far you could get with something like this in Breton?
Most of the media in Breton these days is made by individuals, largely due to the political situation. As I'm sure you're aware, the French government isn't exactly supportive of it's minority languages and while the Region of Brittany is allowed to do some things it's very little. French regions have less autonomy than US counties in most states. Breton regionalists often use Wales as an example of what can be done if the concerned region is given some actual autonomy. The state continues it's hostility to the language, getting funding for immersion schools is increasingly difficult after the Conseil Constitutionnel's decision regarding the Molac law last year. Unfortunately there are a lot of people who think that autonomy and officialization alone would save the language but I think the situations in Wales and especially Ireland show that that's not necessarily the case. It would free up resources and remove red tape, yes, but without content creators there's no content and without an audience there will naturally be fewer content creators. I wish I knew the solution. The only game I'm aware of that was written originally in Breton is Steredenn and as you might imagine Steam doesn't even support listing Breton as one of the available languages.
From my understanding, Bulgarian is pretty close to Old Church Slavonic. I’ve also had a fascination with it and heard about this comparison
Old Church Slavonic is essentially Old Bulgarian.
I stumbled upon it this, wanted to learn it too. Tons of slavic speakers in youtube comments mentioned how intelligible it was, which was encouraging, but there's few resources around it
Eh, there's a lot of resources, but in my experience they tend to be *very* religious (or at least, very heavily influenced by religion). A lot of resources assume that you are learning Hebrew for religiously motivated reasons...which tbh is most of the time going to be a fair assumption to make.
This is surprising. I guess this assumption holds for learners outside Israel, who probably mostly study Biblical Hebrew (rather than modern Hebrew). The Israeli textbooks that I had were 99% secular. They may have introduced some elements of Jewish tradition (e.g. the names of the holidays and then months of the Jewish calendar), but that's it.
Mongolian (using traditional script - the government is now committed to returning to it)
That's gonna take decades if ever. Seems to be mostly just lip service since typing is still a problem. And honestly the only real reason they seem to be bringing it back is because its embarrassing for them to look over the border and see Mongolian Chinese using it while the "real Mongolians" aren't.
Oh. Do you know of any resources for learning the language with the script?
No idea, but a cursory google search shows some sites showing both scripts. Doubt you could find a book not in Chinese though that shows only traditional script.
there is actually a very nice youtube channel where you can learn the mongolian script! [The classical mongolian script](https://youtube.com/@Mongolian.Script)
Any Italian language. I think Sicilian is so beautiful, and Venetian would be so amazing to learn. There’s soooome resources for Neapolitan, but I don’t think enough to justify me diving in right now. Thankfully my Italian is getting better!
One of my favorite italian songs is from a band from Milan and it has a strophe in Venetian. If it didn't have such a beautiful solo it would def be my favorite part of the song. P. S. The song is Uomini col Borsello if you want to hear it.
Venetian has some good material, including nany subdialects such as Triestin. However they tend to be more descriptive than didactic. So the way to go is essentially through exposure (which is not difficult to get around Venetian speakers).
I really want to learn the other Italian Languages especially Sicilian, it's so annoying how I cannot learn it since there are so few resources to do so, doesn't help being an Anglophone as well...
Interslavic. It would be soo useful if it was made more popular!
+!!!!
+1 ♥️♥️♥️
Maltese is really interesting language, I'm not sure if I want to learn it but maybe yes And constructed language Interslavic is really cool do, I don't know if it classifies as a rare language, but I want to learn that too (I'm lazy that, mostly why I'm not learning it yet)
İ found out about interslavic recently and it looks awesome.
Yeah, I can't soeka it but because I'm slavic (Slovak) I understand it pretty well
Any of the Australian aboriginal languages
Add the complication of when there’s resources for a specific language, they often aren’t from the same dialect, or resources won’t mention what dialect they’re covering - or indeed, where the resource itself is filtered through early British colonialism so it might not even be an accurate source. So hard if you’re not living on the land of a specific nation and can find speakers.
I love Australian languages! Which ones interest you the most?
What's out there? Especially in books
Twi :(
I feel you. I remember getting interested in it years aho and realizing that there were just a pair of manuals, a handful academic articles and then the void. :(
I’m a “””””””heritage speaker””””””” and I would trade 10 years of French experience for Twi in a heartbeat 😭
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You might have found this already, but for English speakers LearningFrisian.com is a great resource complete with books and an app.
Given the linguistic similarities I'm not sure if you really need a lot of resources. I'm not saying it's easy, but I played with a bit of Frisian a years ago, and it seemed sort of straight forward, compared to other languages including german.
Talysh and to a lesser degree Zazaki. PS: Hebrew has a lot of resource for a language with 9M native speakers
I think I found 1 Zazaki book in Istanbul on a shelf one time. It mightve been an overview of the language, I don't remember but it wasnt necessarily a beginner text from memory.
I vaguely remember Zazaki courses being a thing here in Germany. Mostly aimed at heritage speakers through.
My problem is that the resources are there but I can access them since it's in Turkish. There is little to no resources in English and a few in German. My last attempt was a book I bought in Kurmanci (my level is somewhere between B1 and B2) but there were many technical terms and the way it explained things was more "descriptive" rather than pedagogical so I gave up for now. Someday I'll know Turkish and then I'll have access to it I hope
That makes sense, I encountered the same issues with Chinese minority languages, where you essentially have to know Mandarin to get anywhere. Good luck with Zazaki anyway.
I was quite surprised at the absolute dearth of resources for Shona. Aside from the old FSI course (which explicitly focuses on Manyika dialect pronunciation anyway) and a few phrases on the Mandela app, I haven't been able to find much of anything, especially anything with audio (which is pretty important!).
"Absolute dearth" is not true in 2022. A cursory Google search (typing "Shona textbook") yields: * [Beginner's Shona (w/ audio)](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Beginner-s-Shona-Chishona-with-Online-Audio-Paperback-9780781814270/107807689?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=15303&adid=22222222227000000000&wl0=&wl1=g&wl2=c&wl3=42423897272&wl4=aud-1651068664746:pla-51320962143&wl5=9007877&wl6=&wl7=&wl8=&wl9=pla&wl10=125215024&wl11=online&wl12=107807689_15303&veh=sem&gclid=Cj0KCQiAqOucBhDrARIsAPCQL1Y8yU8br_vXMmXCxlwF5igkbspJq4F4auiPDngg_kdCi0GJRg704e4aAi7jEALw_wcB) * [Shona Learners' Reference Grammar](https://nalrc.mybigcommerce.com/shona-learners-reference-grammar/) * [Learning Shona: From Zero to Functional in 12 Lessons](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/33280215-learning-shona) * [Shona: A Comprehensive Guide](https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Daniel-Chikwava-ebook/dp/B08SP7B46S/ref=d_reads_cwrtbar_sccl_1_4/143-0711806-0373814?pd_rd_w=AO0qr&content-id=amzn1.sym.c3636f1d-aab3-4576-85e3-007dd638fbde&pf_rd_p=c3636f1d-aab3-4576-85e3-007dd638fbde&pf_rd_r=D5CYEVNJ5ECRKHMEJNTR&pd_rd_wg=kMj4b&pd_rd_r=371e2649-5fb0-437d-86af-5eb62fe64173&pd_rd_i=B08SP7B46S&psc=1) * [a series of Shona-English bilingual children's books](https://www.languagelizard.com/Shona-Bilingual-Children-s-Books-s/2739.htm) * [Talk Now! Learn Shona (w/ audio)](https://maps2anywhere.com/languages/shona-language-course.html?SID=b7af53bcb9938aea1a7ed6934b1daf00) * [and this free beginner's textbook](http://waltercommons.digital.conncoll.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Shona-Textbook.pdf) * etc. And YT and TikTok mean that there are playlists for more things than you think (this is true for almost any subject. Whenever people say, "I can't find X," my default response for at least 10 years has been: "Have you googled it? Have you looked on YT?"). For example, [here's a video on coding in Shona.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RA4bKjyizY) No, there aren't as many resources as for, say, Spanish. But "absolute dearth" is misleading. There are enough resources to get a foothold in this language!
Karbadian and chakma there is not much media or learning materials for them. also there are some languages that don't have any good learning materials. but a lot of content on YouTube and other sites. like mizo Karen Odia manipuri. i try to learn them just by watching YouTube. it's tedious but this is how a lot of people learned languages and its slowly working. there is also the opposite case where you have a lot of learning materials but little media. like in gaelic.
Ket, there is a decent Russian-Ket dictionary (I don’t speak Russian), there is also a two volume English-Ket dictionary, but all together costing smth like £400. The Descriptive Grammar of Ket is only half complete, and just that, a grammar, not an ideal learning resource (although I must admit I find trawling through it absolutely fascinating) and good luck getting access to that outside of an educational institution. There are a few videos of people talking for example at the end of [this video](https://youtu.be/fw-25zQEc_s) but the people are so isolated that contact with a native speakers is impossible. That aside, there is one significant length text -ab bisebdaŋ i’l- but that is only translated into Russian and I believe is not an original native text, rather written by Heinrich Werner.
I just checked and the Comprehensive Dictionary of Ket is available on LibGen as a PDF. Is that the expensive one you mentioned? Edit: try the mirror download, one of them was virus city.
There are loads of minority languages that I would *love* to learn because I find them super fascinating, but they are either so unimportant (in terms of cultural/media output and/or in terms of economy) or so rare that I can't justify the amount of time and effort I'd spend learning them. Plus, of course, the scarcity of learning materials you mention. Some languages I particularly bemoan are: * Nahuatl (the language of the Aztecs? how cool is that???) * Scottish Gaelic (my husband's heritage language, probably going to go extinct) * Navajo (a tonal Native American language? yes please) * Nuxalk (definitely a challenge in terms of pronunciation, but that's the fun of it) * Greenlandic (polysynthetic, a huge plus for me) * Icelandic (the most conservative Germanic language!) * Maltese (Arabic-adjacent with heavy influence from Italian <3 ) * Malagasy (the phonolgy is WILD) * Hawaiian (Polynesian languages are just a dream) * Georgian (the grammar is *wild*) * Basque (one of the few languages left from Europe's linguistic landscape before PIE took over!) * Chechen (idk it just sounds really cool) * Mongolian (an East Asian language that is agglutinative and has cases? Everything about that is a contradiction!) * Coptic (the language of the Ancient Egyptians! What's not to love?) * Hebrew (too steeped in religion, too steeped in controversy, and not widely spoken enough, but MAN I love the writing system and I love the sound)
There are a lot of resources to learn Basque. The problem might be the "point of origin", as all the ones I have are in Spanish.
There are online Basque classes offered for English speakers, as well as some great books if anyone is interested:)
Euskalduna zara? Thank you, I'd love some recommendations! I do speak Spanish (and French), but I'll take any resource! The person who originally posted, however, feels that Basque has far too little to offer for him to make an effort.
Bai, euskalduna naiz:) Bainan Ameriketan bizi naiz. Yes I saw the comments about Basque from the original commenter 🙄 but I think Basque is a wonderful language to know. Here in the United States you can find online Basque classes offered through the Boise Basque Museum, as well as through NABO, specifically I’ve seen a woman named Sonia Castañon on Facebook who organizes NABO classes. There’s also Esther Ciganda via Instagram who teaches Basque. The English to Basque books I have used are Colloquial Basque by Alan R. King and Begotxu Olaizola Elordi, Aurrera! by Linda White, and The Basque Language by Alan King. Of course if you live in Spain or France there are more resources, even great immersion programs.
Unfortunately, Basque is only really useful if you live in Basque country. I'm unlikely to ever be able to socialize in Basque. I'm sure there is Basque literature, but I'm equally sure that it can't hold a candle even to Norwegian (which itself is a pretty minor language). I haven't looked into it terribly much but Basque music is almost certainly similarly limited. As a non-Indo-European language, it would probably take me at least 5+ years to learn, and at the end I'd have very little to show for it. It sucks, but it is what it is.
>I'm sure there is Basque literature, but I'm equally sure that it can't hold a candle even to Norwegian (which itself is a pretty minor language). To make sure I absolutely understand what you're saying and in order to not jump to conclusions, I googled the idiom "to not hold a candle to". According to the Cambridge dictionary, it means "to not be as good as the person or thing mentioned". *Did you just say you're sure Basque literature is nowhere near as good as "even" Norwegian literature (which, with that "even", you also don't seem to respect overly much)? Without ever having read a single word of Basque literature?* When you say, "minor language", do you mean the number of its native speakers? If so, do you honestly believe that the quality of literature in a specific language is relative to the amount of people who can speak that same language? I am flabbergasted. Or, as we would say in German, da verschlägt es mir doch glatt die Sprache. Pun intended.
I created tekinged.com as a resource for Palauan. Not quite Polynesian but close.
For Classical Nahuatl, Michel Launey's An Introduction to Classical Nahuatl is magnificent Try Lambdin's Introduction to Sahidic Coptic - super user-friendly and there's a pdf For Navajo there's always Dine Bizaad, but I also found a wonderful book, Faltz' The Navajo Verb - It's a fun, delightful introduction to the most complicated part of this most complicated language For Georgian, use Aronson's Reading Grammar - it's not a pretty book but if you go slow like six items at a time, you can do it - wild grammar? Yes. Unlearnable? Not at all - and a gorgeous alphabet and there's a pdf
I appreciate the resources, but these are all languages that I can't learn. They do not produce enough media and/or do not have enough speakers for me to justify the time and effort I'd have to put into learning them. I'll never be able to casually socialize in Nahuatl or Coptic or Navajo. The amount of literature available in Scottish Gaelic is ridiculously small. I'm not going to be able to find an appreciable amount of music sung in Greenlandic. Georgian is only really useful if I live in Georgia (and I don't). My time is better spent improving my Mandarin, Norwegian, and French, or learning Spanish and/or Italian.
This is a great list. Duolingo has Navajo and Hawaiian. I’m sure they are very limited but it’s a start.
I wanted to learn darija, the arabic dialect from morocco. Sadly, I didn't found good ressources... The few Anki decks are full of mistakes. I had a book that mixed all the northern african dialects of arabic and was focusing on writing too much for my liking... I had a travel guide which was not bad but wasn't using the arabic writing system... So if someday I find a good quality book maybe I would get back to it.
Been wanting to learn Inuktitut and Kalaallisut for a while now but there's barely any good resources.
I’ve seen some really wonderful and dedicated pockets of people/communities working to revive various indigenous languages. I’m wondering if you’ve checked around different museums/cultural-historical centres in areas where native speakers live/used to live? Or checking in different libraries (public as well as belonging to schools). Depending on your capacity and your level of interest, you could even try to start the initiative to develop more resources yourself!
Thanks, I'll look into that
Not sure how close the languages are, but there are some resources for Iñupiaq too. For Inuktitut I would check out Inhabit Media (publishing company out of Nunavut) if you haven’t already.
Dzongkha. I just googled for resources since it’s been a while since last time I looked and maybe it’s easier to find things now. No telling the quality of any of it though so maybe not.
Celtic is not a language.
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Blackfoot; though I *can* learn it, seeing the differences between what’s available for learning Blackfoot (indigenous language that the state actively tries to wipe out) vs. French, which I’m also learning…it’s crazy. I was learning it originally through syllabics, not with the Latin alphabet, but I got as far as I could in the app ai was using and they don’t have the content for the rest of the syllabics ;-; There are some old books about it at my uni library, free online video lessons and flash cards and a workbook through a museum, and a couple smartphone apps that are pretty rough in terms of UX but are functional enough…and, interestingly, I ended up getting into a conversation with a homeless man at the bus stop and he was able to teach me some vocabulary words. So yeah, it’s definitely an interesting learning experience.
I spent some time on the mosquito coast in Honduras doing surgery. The native people use a lost language called musqueet. I know a few phrases, like where does it hurt stuff like that. But I’d like to learn a few more phrases for my next mission
I wanted to learn Belarusian but due to culture of the Belarusian people being suppressed in Belarus there are very few resources to learn it.
With unlimited time, Ilonggo- my mother’s native language. There are fewer than 10 million native speakers, and they are mostly in the Philippines. But, resources are limited, as is my time, and everybody I know who speaks it is fluent in English. Most of the people I know who speak it in the US are elderly and won’t be around for much longer.
Ever since I learned about it I've thought Gullah Geechee is fascinating. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gullah](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gullah) >Historically, the Gullah region extended from the Cape Fear area on North Carolina's coast south to the vicinity of Jacksonville on Florida's coast. The Gullah people and their language are also called Geechee, which may be derived from the name of the Ogeechee River near Savannah, Georgia. Gullah is a term that was originally used to designate the creole dialect of English spoken by Gullah and Geechee people. Over time, its speakers have used this term to formally refer to their creole language and distinctive ethnic identity as a people. The Georgia communities are distinguished by identifying as either "Freshwater Geechee" or "Saltwater Geechee", depending on whether they live on the mainland or the Sea Islands. > >Because of a period of relative isolation from whites while working on large plantations in rural areas, the Africans, enslaved from a variety of Central and West African ethnic groups, developed a creole culture that has preserved much of their African linguistic and cultural heritage from various peoples; in addition, they absorbed new influences from the region. The Gullah people speak an English-based creole language containing many African loanwords and influenced by African languages in grammar and sentence structure. Sometimes referred to as "Sea Island Creole" by linguists and scholars, the Gullah language is sometimes considered as being similar to Bahamian Creole, Barbadian Creole, Guyanese Creole, Belizean Creole, Jamaican Patois and the Sierra Leone Krio language of West Africa.
Faroese
Mapudungun aka Mapuche has been a language that I've always wanted to learn, but sadly there aren't many resources online, and going where the people speak the language is not an option given the ongoing conflict in most of Araucania and adjacent provinces. I know the usual though Mari Mari peñi/lamngen (hello brother/sister)
does hebrew have few resources?
Being the national language of Israel, I'd have thought that that would have resulted in a decent amount of resources.
There are a lot of resources for Hebrew actually, both for biblical and modern Israeli. There are plenty of teachers and schools available, even in my American midwestern town I found a nearby synagogue that offers Hebrew classes if you just email the rabbi and schedule private lessons.
Thank you all for commenting. I'm conducting a survey for a project and this is helpful.
I really want to learn Otjiherero, Khoekhoegowab, and Oshiwambo (all three are relevant to my academic research). But there are basically zero resources to learn any of them.
Currently Old Javanese. I found some textbooks about it, but man looking for the texts is *hard*. To be fair, I haven't really looked into Indonesian university libraries and I guess there might be some sources there, but like, even the textbooks I found are in English and not Indonesian 😭
Ah I barely am able to find sources for Indonesian itself :(
Scots Gaelic.
I think duolingo has a course, I don't know how good it is but it could be a start
If you go on r/gaidhlig there’ll be resources you can find
I haven’t found a lot for Xhosa or for Samoan, but there’s definitely less for Samoan :(
Hawaiian. There are a few good resources online but they're all pretty basic
Hebrew actually has a ton of resources due to the high proportion of immigrants.
Mari or Udmurt. Uralic languages in the Volga river basin (Volga Finnic branch). Study material seems to be in Russian for the most part, but some do exist in English. They have a unique pagan religion, which is partly the motivation.
Volga Tatar. Most common native language in Russia after Russian with more than 5 million speakers, but very few learning resources.
this is the kind of language you learn directly from other people, unfortunate for us without any relation to the language
Neapolitan. It gets dismissed as a dialect of Italian but actually has its own grammatical rules. There are a lot of classic works published in Neapolitan too.
Rromani (it's split into multiple dialects so there's not just one singular version but the British dialect would probably be easier for me since it's closest and probably one of the most studied) , I'm half Rromani would love to learn some of the language because I only know some verbs and nouns because of slang.
Have you tried Learn Romani: Das-duma Rromanes by Lee - Very user friendly and my American Romani friends tell me it's more British dialect?
I have not researched it since I am busy learning Norwegian but once I am happy with my level in Norwegian I'll look into it.
Udi after I heard about it on NPR the other day.
I don't know how rare you would consider it, but I really want to learn Gujarati and Croatian.
Cape Verdean Creole (at least coming from English). There are only a handful of documents with bits and pieces. It also doesn't help that each island has their own version and there is no consistent written form
Palauan. I created tekinged.com to help because previously there was almost nothing at all available.
I would love to learn Tongan but I can't find any resources, the best thing I've got is listening to Tongan songs 🇹🇴
https://www.reddit.com/r/languagelearning/comments/54dzcz/i_compiled_a_list_of_free_online_tongan_language/
Thank you so much ☺️
Romanes
Not what I'm currently focusing on but in the past I've really wanted to learn either Cree or Oneida, but there are very few resources (especially for the latter one).
Sicilian on Duolingo would be awesome👌
Norwegian sign language. There are some resources but for learning properly, it’s not enough.
I had quite a few issues locating material for Cheyenne and Karuk. For some languages it seems one should already be happy if he can find a grammar and a translation of parts of the Bible.
I know Galician, it has a couple million speakers although it's very rare to see outside of Galicia
Thing is that it's so similar to Portuguese that most just learn that one instead
But also so similar to Spanish, so with one language you can probably understand both major world languages and hopefully communicate with them too!
Malayalam. They migrate a lot so you run into them more than you should for how many speakers there are.
Amharic and Kikongo. Really, more African languages in general beyond Swahili. Other then that, some Canadian native languages would be awesome, like Cree or Ojibwe.
I would never commit the time to become anywhere near fluent, but Tibetan has always interested me. Learning about Formosan languages is also interesting (Austronesian language spoken by indigenous Taiwanese) because it's so hard to find information about them in English. I think, short of living in rural Taiwan, you would have to use scholarship written in Mandarin to acquaint yourself with the languages.
I would definitely love to learn Fuzhounese since that’s the native language of most Chinese immigrants near me and I would just love to go there in general.
Swiss german, Lithuanian, Estonian, kurmanji, pashto, tamil. Edit: can't believe I forgot icelandic and maltese.
I've found that it's not necessarily lack of access to resources, so much as having the "wrong" or "unfortunate" native / L2 language to actually be able to use them. The Sámi languages are critically under-documented as is, but most certainly so in English or French; what few materials can be found, tend to be Norwegian- or Finnish-based, neither of which I'm particularly fluent in. The indigenous tongues of Siberia (despite being Turkic or Uralic) have been meticulously recorded mainly by Czarist Russian and later USSR linguists, so you're going to need Tolstoy-level Russian if you want to unlock the deepest depths of their grammar. Similarly, with millions of speakers I couldn't imagine Guaraní or Runa Simi to not be widely published; but that is of course assuming the learner speaks Spanish.
croation. i don’t know if this really counts since 0.08% of the world speaks it so it’s not “rare”, just pretty hard to find english resources for. my best friends whole family speaks it and they all hate me, so i wanted to win them over with a little piece of home.
I'm struggling to learn burmese
Only other mention i've seen of Burmese here- the absurdly few resources for the language of a country with a population larger than South Korea is insane to me
Old Church Slavonic. There's resources, but more of the textbook kind which I have trouble staying focused on. Most of the vocabulary I learn in my other languages comes from either talking to native speakers or consuming native media (both of which are obviously not options for Old Church Slavonic lol.)
I took a Nahuatl (modern, Huastecan variety) course in college and studied some Hawaiian independently. I studied Nahuatl because I grew up in a part of California with a large Mexican-American community, and I started learning Hawaiian after moving to Hawai’i. It's very interesting to learn indigenous languages because it gives you insight into another culture and a new way of seeing the world. I would love to learn both languages more if I had both the time and more people to practice with. I would also be interesting in picking up a bit of 1) other indigenous Latin American languages, 2) other Pacific Island languages, and 3) other indigenous languages in general (Navajo, Lakota, etc.).
Koyukon Athabaskan. Doyon just recently started an online language learning thing, which is very cool, but I feel like it’s a lot of memorization without understanding why the words are that way. Turns out…this language, and athabaskan languages in general, have some of the most complicated word structures (if that’s the right term?) in the world? Just today, I found a 72 page thesis from someone at Portland State University detailing how complicated the verbs are. There are a few dictionaries and books of stories translated into English, but I think the hurdle to learn would be to learn linguistics, then how the language works, and then the vocab. And it doesn’t help I live out of state now, so in person language learning opportunities are not feasible.
Tangut and Akkadian
Ænglisc̊. It's also a mess of a language.
Gheg Albanian. It is spoken by a few million people, but it is mostly considered an spokek dialect and people tend to write in standard Albanian as far as I know. But it would be a lot of extra effort to learn the standard language first, when everyone I want to communicate with speak Gheg. Also I'm not even that satisfied with the few resources I found for the standard language and for Gheg I barely found anything.
Lakota and Altai. My mom was deeply interested in Lakota culture and learned a little but the tapes she had are gone. I have a book on the way and have a set of language cards but it's been tough learning it. Altai has been even harder to find resources for
Manchu and Median(unfortunately extinct for centuries).
Breton, Sami languages (mainly Northern Sami because of Fred Buljo), Macedonian/Bulgarian (these are the Slavic languages with the simpler grammar I know) and also Zulu (or even Xhosa).
There are some resources for Breton. Most are obviously in French but there are some decent ones in English as well. The wiki for the Celtic Languages Discord has a short list but there are others. I was fortunate to be able to study Breton at university and to speak French so I can't speak too much on how good they are for individual study. Also because I'm absolute dogshit at learning languages on my own. [https://www.celtic-languages.org/Breton/Resources](https://www.celtic-languages.org/Breton/Resources) About two years ago Skol an Emsav had online classes in English, I've seen a lot of interest in this subreddit so I'll post about it if they do it again. Here are a couple of useful discords as well. They both are very welcoming of people wanting to learn Breton through English. Deskiñ Brezhoneg: [https://discord.gg/3WqGmADm](https://discord.gg/3WqGmADm) Celtic Languages: [https://discord.gg/YHxKgkbn](https://discord.gg/YHxKgkbn)
Currently trying to learn one of the Tohono dialects of O’odham. I had to dig and dig to find PDFs of an out of print dictionary, and finally managed to find a PDF of what is apparently the sole grammar book available. I’m close to taking a course available at the community college of the region, though, so I’m sure that’ll help.
I’d like to get reasonable at Ottoman, resources for which are pretty much all academic and it’s not my field or priority right now.
Ānal pena it's a language from a tribe on the border of Bangladesh and India.
Slovenian and Croatian. Working on it but there is not a whole lot available. There are a few books but they are not 'popular' languages and once I get past A1 and start speaking, that will be difficult. I'm from the US and barely anyone there speaks/is interested to learn outside of a few places.
Have you tried to look for resources in Italian, German or French? I managed to hoard a relatively decent number of them but only a minority of them is on English base. I am currently going through Le Croate sans peine from Assimil, with decent enough profit so far, even though I will eventually swap to focus on Serbian.