# Rare, extinct, and endangered languages you'd like to learn **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 8, 2011, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rare-extinct-and-endangered-languages-youd-like-to-learn/570633 "2011-02-08T07:23:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Mississippienne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d2c977/32.png) [@Mississippienne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mississippienne)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2011, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rare-extinct-and-endangered-languages-youd-like-to-learn/570633/1 "2011-02-08T07:23:07Z")
**Disclaimer** : the last thread I tried to start about language revival got derailed by griping about whether or not endangered and extinct languages should even be revived. If you want to debate that subject, I encourage you to do so in a thread that is not this one. If you do NOT want to learn an endangered, extinct, moribund, or rare language, then please do not post here as it will add nothing to the conversation. Start another thread called ‘People who don’t want to learn weird and possibly useless languages’. If you don’t like learning languages in general, more power to you, but I do not care, so please don’t post about that here. What counts as a ‘rare, exinct, endangered, or moribund’ language for the purposes of this thread: I am going to use Wikipedia’s [Lists of endangered languages](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_endangered_languages) and [List of extinct languages](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinct_languages), not because it is perfect or the last word on the subject, just to have a standard, purely for the purposes of this thread, by which to judge a language’s rareness or deadness. While I understand that you may consider Japanese to be very exotic, it is not in any danger of dying out anytime soon (despite Godzilla’s best efforts to the contrary) and does not count for the purposes of this thread. Sumerian, on the other hand, would. A resource for those who might wish to know more about endangered languages: [Endangered Language Fund](http://www.endangeredlanguagefund.org/index.html). Phew! Okay, onto the fun stuff. I love language learning, and after I conquer a couple of more well-known languages (French and Turkish) I’d love to learn a rare or extinct language. One that fascinates me is Michif, a mixed language (as distinct from a creole) that is a combination of French and Cree – the noun phrases are mostly French, and the verbs Cree! C’mon, how cool is that?! As for extinct languages, I think Hittite is beautiful, and not only is it Indo-European, like my native language English, but it’s, like, all crazy and badass and archaic. Instead of having a masculine/feminine gender system like many of its sibling IE languages, Hittite has inanimate/animate, like some African languages! Besides, if I ever invent a time machine I can travel back to ancient Hattusa and ask for the nearest bar in fluent Hittite (_Kuwapi pedan kuedani siessar akuwantari_). ---
**Author:** ![Panurge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/fbc32d/32.png) [@Panurge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Panurge)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2011, 8:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rare-extinct-and-endangered-languages-youd-like-to-learn/570633/2 "2011-02-08T08:49:36Z")
I’ll take the “birth of civilization”-package, please: Hittite, Akkadian, Sumerian, and whatever language they spoke in Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa (especially that last one - I would _love_ to know whether they were of Indo-European or Dravidian origin - or something else entirely). ---
**Author:** ![Claverhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/13edae/32.png) [@Claverhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claverhouse)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2011, 10:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rare-extinct-and-endangered-languages-youd-like-to-learn/570633/3 "2011-02-08T10:10:40Z")
I’ve got a thick Gothic grammar\* somewhere, and I actually wanted to learn it; but as with Latin we can only guess at the speech. Since neither the Visigoths nor the Ostrogoths produced any literature, learning it would be pleasingly pointless. It was the 1880s: they had a lot of time on their hands. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2011, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rare-extinct-and-endangered-languages-youd-like-to-learn/570633/4 "2011-02-08T11:49:12Z")
Basque isn’t on that list, but there is danger (the fight back is ongoing) of its dialects being lost to the “unified” official dialect. I’d love to be able to learn the two dialects which I know my forefathers on the all-male line used to know (Dad didn’t). ---
**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2011, 12:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rare-extinct-and-endangered-languages-youd-like-to-learn/570633/5 "2011-02-08T12:06:58Z")
Cro-Magnon. I am certain “Oh, Jondular, Jondular!” would be more compelling in the original tongue. ---
**Author:** ![ErinPuff](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dbc845/32.png) [@ErinPuff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ErinPuff)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2011, 12:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rare-extinct-and-endangered-languages-youd-like-to-learn/570633/6 "2011-02-08T12:23:43Z")
I’d like to learn [Shuadit/Judeo-Provençal](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuadit_language). I’m interested in the French composer Darius Milhaud, who was from a Provençal Jewish family, and his close friend Armand Lunel was the last known speaker of the language. ---
**Author:** ![Rushgeekgirl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rushgeekgirl/32/3715_2.png) [@Rushgeekgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rushgeekgirl)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2011, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rare-extinct-and-endangered-languages-youd-like-to-learn/570633/7 "2011-02-08T15:06:02Z")
> **[Otomi language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otomi_language)** > > Otomi (/ˌoʊtəˈmiː/; Spanish: Otomí \[otoˈmi\]) is an Oto-Pamean language spoken by approximately 240,000 indigenous Otomi people in the central altiplano region of Mexico. Otomi consists of several closely related languages, many of which are not mutually intelligible. The word Hñähñu \[hɲɑ̃hɲṹ\] has been proposed as an endonym, but since it represents the usage of a single dialect, it has not gained wide currency. Linguists have classified the modern dialects into three dialect areas: the Northwe Li... This is my Miguel’s first language and what his father spoke all his life. Mig didn’t learn Spanish until he was left at an orphanage when he was five. It’s a strange and beautiful language that sounds like Arabic to me. ---
**Author:** ![Broomstick](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/broomstick/32/246_2.png) [@Broomstick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Broomstick)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2011, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rare-extinct-and-endangered-languages-youd-like-to-learn/570633/8 "2011-02-08T17:37:18Z")
Apparently it doesn’t quite qualify as “endangered” (I didn’t find it on the linked lists) but I did spend a couple years studying Irish Gaelic, which is certainly not a common language Wouldn’t mind learning Cherokee or Hawaiian or Basque. ---
**Author:** ![elmwood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmwood/32/3060_2.png) [@elmwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elmwood)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2011, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/rare-extinct-and-endangered-languages-youd-like-to-learn/570633/9 "2011-02-08T17:42:06Z")
Ladino, also called Judeo-Spanish. Ladino is to Spanish what Yiddish is to German. Its beauty puts French to shame.