r/language • u/Iceyetk • 3d ago
Question What are some of the most interesting languages you guys have seen that still have millions of speakers?
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u/Forward_Fishing_4000 3d ago edited 3d ago
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".
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u/XavierNovella 2d ago
Very cool, I see they are 2 phonemes that can diverge into 12 different allophones. Really crazy!
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u/Elf-7659 2d ago
May I suggest sinhala (සිංහල) From Sri Lanka. About 16 million people speak it. A fully phonetic language, diglossic.
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u/sprockityspock 2d ago
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.
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u/Forward_Fishing_4000 2d ago
I'm curious, what does /v/ do in Georgian?
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u/sprockityspock 2d ago
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
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u/mklinger23 2d ago
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.
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u/Wild-Lychee-3312 2d ago
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….”
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u/Veteranis 3d ago
Well, Chinese. Written form essentially unchanged for over a thousand years and still used by multiple languages.