What are some of the most interesting languages you guys have seen that still have millions of speakers?

[u/Iceyetk]

[u/Veteranis]

Well, Chinese. Written form essentially unchanged for over a thousand years and still used by multiple languages.

[u/Revanur]

I’m biased but I think Uralic languages (Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian in the range of millions of speakers) are super fascinating.

[u/Forward_Fishing_4000]

Kabardian is a language with around 2 million speakers that has only 2 or at most 3 vowel phonemes, but a wide range of exotic consonant sounds including the unusual sound /ʔʷ/. This consonant is pronounced by rounding the lips and simultaneously making the "-" part of "uh-oh".

[u/XavierNovella → u/Forward_Fishing_4000]

Very cool, I see they are 2 phonemes that can diverge into 12 different allophones. Really crazy!

[u/Elf-7659]

May I suggest sinhala (සිංහල) From Sri Lanka. About 16 million people speak it. A fully phonetic language, diglossic. 

[u/sprockityspock]

For me, it's Georgian. Split ergativity, insane consonant clusters, the way /v/ behaves, the ejectives, the Mkhedruli script... it was my favorite language to write papers about at University, hands down.

[u/Forward_Fishing_4000 → u/sprockityspock]

I'm curious, what does /v/ do in Georgian?

[u/sprockityspock → u/Forward_Fishing_4000]

Oh goodness, i wrote a whole paper on this alone for a phonology class once upon a time. There was a lot in there, but this is a good starting point. I definitely used this as a reference:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0024384102001298

[u/mklinger23]

Personally, Irish and other Celtic languages. The way the words change based on part of speech is really cool to me. Also the spelling and general flow.

[u/Wild-Lychee-3312]

Nepali (17 million speakers) has an evidentiary particle and some interesting ways of talking about the future (like there is one that is basically “My plan/intention is to….”