The last fluent speaker of the Wichita language (related to the Pawnee your video mentioned) died just a few years ago. I have heard the Euchee language has just a few speakers still living. American Indian languages are going extinct constantly. In the early 20th century the U. S. government took children to boarding schools, and punished them if they were using their own language. You could have a list of the 50 rarest languages in the world and never leave the Americas.
I believe Papua New Guinea has even more rare languages. But many of them are not dying, they are rare only because tribes that speak them are small and isolated. Also there are many languages in Eurasia which are as rare as Native American
@@johanneswohler5476 I share your dismay. It's so heartbreaking. . To strangle the words of a people thru outlawing the language is like the destruction of ancient archaeological sites by the radicals of ISIS & the Taliban. Or the burning of books...which happens in every historical epoch.
Xhosa is one of the national languages here in South Africa, and not that hard to speak. I learned to get around in Xhosa over about 3 months of working alongside Xhosa people
My university offers a course in Nootka, a language spoken by indigenous people on Vancouver Island with about 8000 speakers. It's nearly dying out, or at least was at some point, but there's a program to save it as well. I thought about taking it and even if I went for a more practical language for now, I may learn it later if the course is still offered then.
sorry, I was just calling out watchmojo, they don't seem to do much research, as the title states "Rare Languages Still Spoken Around the World" yet xhosa is still very popular in SA. but i agree with you its beautiful and unique language.
The Sami languages were completely forgotten from the list. They boast around 20-30,000 native speakers mostly in the Scandinavian Lapland. It actually comprises of multiple distinct Sami languages, back from a time where villages were so isolated in the arctic cold that they had their own languages altogether, and the 30,000 speakers are all these 10 or so languages combined.
Well, seeing as the people themselves are almost extinct, with only lots of blond blue eyed swedes calling themselves "sami", it's not strange the language is dying too... Real sami's look a lot like indigenous Americans. Just peruse old photos, not a single blond or blue eyed sami at all...
Zathaghil They didn't look like native americans at all but it is true that Sweden and Norway often forcefully assimilated the sami to their nations and nowadays there isn't a single Sami without any "germanic blood". However in Sweden we actually practiced a policy which said that "Sami shall remain sami" as a way to not mix Swedes and sami people but that was a bit too late for the Sami I guess. But Norway actually has the biggest population of Sami and they were very keen on assimilating them rather than keeping them away.
The swedish samis has 3 big dialects, the east, west and middle sides, my granddad spoke the west dialect that was a little diffrent from the main west dialect. Because his mom came from a small city/villige that was between the middle and west side of sweden.
Well so is Manchurian. I mean, although ethnic Manchu are quite numerous, the fact they took over China and established the Qing dynasty saw them gradually being assimilated by the Chinese to the point where only a handful (less than 500) are native speakers now. If anything, more Han Chinese speak Manchurian than Manchu, due to the need for some of the scholars to study.
Sami people do not look like Indigenous Americans at all. They look completely different from any tribe I can think of. (none of my two look like them)
The funny thing is that the example of basque you have put in this video is Bizkaiera, one of the dialects that Basque has. The language changes a lot depending of which part of the basque country you go. I speak it totally differently for example.
Common in all languages, I think. I put a Cherokee language app on my phone, and while scrolling through it, I was like, "WHO THE HELL PRONOUNCES IT THAT WAY?" Oooohhhhhh....Eastern Band...psht.
Western band. Even then, confusion arises between western band dialects...but where Western says, "ociyo" or "ciyo" (Hello), Eastern band pronounces it "shiyo"....they're also the smallest band, due to the Trails of Tears, as the larger percentage was removed from their eastern homeland.
No language is more “difficult” than another, it’s all based on how distant and different the language is from one’s mother tongue that determines the difficulty of one learning.
This is a common misconception and thanks for clarification. I, as a Serbo-Croatian speaker can learn Polish far (far far far) easier than I would Chechen. A Chechen speaker however, would easily learn Archi, while learning Cree would give him more trouble. Cree speakers, on the other hand, would learn Ojibwe far easier than !Xóõ, or Serbo-Croatian. It's not just about genetic relationship either. An English speaker would probably learn Indonesian more easily than Russian, even though Russian is related to English, while Indonesian is not. In this case, English's phonology and morphology are closer to that of Indonesian than Russian. I hope you've understood something from my examples. Look up all the languages I mentioned, some of them have interesting phonologies and/or grammar. Don't look at !Xóõ's consonants though. If you want to stay sane
Se você acha que não existe lingua difícil, tente conjugar os verbos da lingua portuguesa 😅 Sou brasileiro estudioso e mesmo assim me confundo na conjugação de certos tempos verbais 😮
Some Indigenous Languages should have included like Hawaiian and I only say that is because the missionaries forbade its use and by the early 1900's is was rarely used.There was a comeback as more schools taught it in the classroom but to this day my mother, father and us kids (we're in our 50's and 60's) do not know how to speak except some words and in Pidgin English. My G-pa and his siblings spoke fluent Hawaiian and I could understand but not speak it back. How sad. Do NOT let another culture override yours or risk losing your Culture to assimilation.
Audreen Lima-Connors Except that we now have Olelo TV and Hawaiian language schools and more. Are you even in Hawaii now? Olelo Hawaii is everywhere - even in the new student learning descriptors for the DOE.
In 2003, Jérawr Asáwer the last Kaweskar died here in Chile, The Kaweskar and The Selknam people were erradicated by the Chilean government in the south of Chile, but the government has refused to acknowledge their genocide. With her death, the Kaweskar language is lost forever.
That is because it confines to a small part of the canton of Graubünden (one of 26 cantons), wich is mostly coverd by a mountain range and so has lowest inhabitant density.
There are some speakers in the Italian-speaking Canton of Ticino, too; though not many and diminishing as years go by. Radio Ticino used to have limited Romansch language broadcasts a few hours per week.
Why only stop at Archi? All the languages of Caucasus are rare, unique and isolate. Including North-West Caucasian languages: Circassian(58 letters alphabet) Abkhazian and extinct Ubykh(88 letters alphabet); North-East Caucasian: Nakh-Daghestani (Chechen, Ingush, Avar, Dargin, Lezgin, etc; and South Caucasian Kartvelian languages.
Put in a word for Udi, ancient Caucasian Albanian. Used to be the third written language in Caucacus alongside Georgian and Armenian (and you might not count Armenian, as it's probably a Bronze Age offshoot of Mycenaean Greek). So: Udi. It's a thing.
That's awesome! I am Friulan / Furlane. Crazy, never thought there'd be any sort-of large scale recognition for our language. Wild! Thanks, WatchMojo for this exposure. As we like to say, Grasie.
i really dislike the choice though, souix, comanche, apache cherokee, and even cheyenne are spoken more than pawnee, pawnee is big but not as big as the previous languages listed with comanche and apache even being used for military codes here in the u.s.
Sam, that's the thing with a lot of languages. There's about 7,000 languages in the world, but we lose one every two weeks or so. Keep fighting the good fight and learn.
Silverbolt Bluefire Pawnee, Wichita and Arikara are all close in language. They are spoken more within homes. I grew up with my uppit speaking fluent Pawnee
I've actually been to a village of Piraha (Amazonas state, Brazil), and it's actually pronounced with the accent on the last syllable, not the first. Also, the last letter has a tilde (~) over it, which gives it a nasal tone. Regarding the Basques, you can't get between Spain and France, since they share a border. I believe what you wanted to say is that they're found in both countries.
Mass immigration and multiculturism is what destroys true diversity, it is like taking all the colours of the rainbow and mixing them until you have one lifeless colour, see what happens with English coming and replacing indigenous and unique languages
I know this is a comment from 4 years ago but I live in Massachusetts and I want to learn Nipmuc because I am interested in the pre colonial history and languages of New England do you know anywhere I can learn it
There’s a girl at my school who lives in America for half of the year and then she leaves to go live in the Basque Country. She can speak English, Spanish, and Basque. When she came back to America she brought back a few friends who were from that country and we got to meet them, it was pretty cool.
I am surprised not to see the mention of Manx while Welsh has been mentionned. The other is Romanche, some people still speak this language in Switzerland.
@@topc6444 your data are wrong. About 1.500.000 can understand it (900.000 in Friuli and the others all around the world) and more or less 600.000 can speak it. So I mean, 600.000 is not that bad
@@topc6444 I'm from Friuli too. Out of 1 milion Friulians, between 50% and 60% can speak it, that's what regional agencies say. And I believe it 'cause in my area, for example, nearly everyone who is 20 yo or older can speak it, and also a lot of young people use it (I'm 17 and in my crew everyone speaks it). So, I mean, maybe in Udine, Pordenone and Gorizia or near the border with Veneto and Trieste way less people speak friulian and someone barely understands it, but on the mountains and in the countryside 60% is definitely close to the actual situation (think of Carnia, where I would say that the % of friulian spealers is actually higher than 60%)
In the US, there should be a bilingual equal opportunity experiment, of Native languages. Depending on the area . Where there are Sioux Natives teach the language in public school. Huron , Mohegan, revitalize the true American languages keep them alive.
I completely agree! My family is from the Menominee tribe, and the Menominee language is nearly extinct. I would love to learn it, but I don't know how :(
Perhaps more importantly, teach the TRUE history of the Native American peoples...the betrayal, lies, genocide and subjugation by the US Govt., then move on from there. Learning the languages would be the reward for learning about the rich cultural history of these people.
I loved learning a little bit of Cree up north in the NWT working at Snap lake Diamond mine. Tanse' Ni Stow.(hello/welcome, my brother, my friend) I absolutely loved getting to know folks better, hearing legends and tales, and hearing and learning a bit here and there. Beautiful. It helped me grow spiritually, but woefully, I know so little, but sure loved hearing it and learning bits and pieces here and there, still woeful, but was so good to say such things to coworkers and new friends.
I’m so glad they have Taa on this list, what a remarkable language! Although, some of the sample interviews are of N|uu speakers. I think!! I don’t actually know. I just remember seeing some of those interviews on other videos about preserving the N|uu language. By the way, what’s Xhosa doing on this list? It’s alive and well.
Harley Lyons that is true, we lost most of our languages. But, we have some left which is great. My family speaks 4 aboriginal languages, it's really down to the younger generation to keep what we have alive. But, thank you for mentioning our language situation. It means a lot
Alonso---Yes, because just as they tried to keep the Irish and Welsh from speaking their own languages, they did so in any other country they invaded, which is why Pawnee is on the list (and all Native American languages should be). They stole children, put them in boarding schools far from their parents, forced them to speak English, punished them harshly if they spoke their own language.
The thing is that sentinel is a little island where there is a tribe that attacks anyone who approaches them. They live in the stone age and reject any contact with the outer world so we don't know what their language is like, but we know they must have a language different to any other. The video they put was part of a documentary.
In my country there are 22 lenguages. Many might be extinct soon. Some of them are only talked in small towns. Some of the 22 are Achi, Akateco, Chuj, Itza. But the principals are Spanish, K'iche and Kaqchiquel.
my Friend speaks mandinga, it's a small language in Ghambia. I said to my friend that he needs to write something in his language because they don't have official writing and my friend learn to write when he was 3 years old.
For this list maybe you should add ESKAYA. Eskaya is the only LANGUAGE ISOLATE spoken in the Philippines but a small community in the island of Bohol. The language is very different from any Philippine language or even Austronesian language. It also has its own writing system and its phonology is very strange. Eskaya is taught as a subject in that community and is the liturgical language of the Philippine Independent Catholic Church members of the Eskaya tribe.
I feel blessed to be Welsh and able to speak it because England has so much to do with our education not many people know how to speak it I only know 4 people and there all family members I live in South Wales
If you were to say that my welsh grandfather was or did anything english he would go for his old shotgun and hunt you down, no matter how far from Shewsbury you are ( and many there would join him )
You polyglot you, keep up the good work because in about 150-200 year we Americans and the people of England will not understand a word each other say's. pretty much a fact unless some event happens to make the language of english go into a retrograde. But you did forget irish. They speak english too. I lived there for 2 years and it took about 2 months for my brain to acclimate to the Irish form of English so that I could understand them. But after that, no matter how thick the accent was i could understand and carry on a conversation.
the last true native speaker, but there are over a hundred new native speakers, there is an entirely Manx immersion primary school(the bunsçhoil) and a largish population of fluent children
There is also Älvdal found in a valley on the boarder of Norway and Sweden in 2015 (it was recognized as a distinct language, not just a dialect). It is spoken by less than 4,000 people, but is being studied scholarly.
That's not Sentinelese. I'm assuming that's an indigenous language native to one of the tribes in the Amazon based off the image you used. Sentinelese is based in the Andaman Islands thus not only is the language you're playing not the right one but neither is the footage you're showing. There is little to NO understanding of the Sentinelese language nor of the Sentinelese people or culture. For further info: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_language
@@devonmunn5728 You seemed to have missed the part in the OP's comment where he points out that is not video footage of Sentinelese, but an Amazonian tribe. It's not that they got the language wrong, it's that they showed the wrong people.
Basque was widely spoken on the West coast of Newfoundland, Canada in the 18th and 19th Centuries. It was also spoken by some people in Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon until the 1950s.
I don't speak any other language than English, but I've been fascinated by other languages that have unusual structures or regional peculiarities. Years ago I read about a woman anthropologist who lived with and studied the language of, an Aboriginal tribe in far north Queensland. She found that while they had over a hundred words for different directions, there wasn't one word that described a person being lost. The most surprising thing of all though was that the tribe had two distinct dialects in their language - one for the men and one for the women!
Dang, Te Reo didn't even get a mention. That's how rare that is ;). With less than 150,000 speakers, and only 50,000 who speak it well, it would definitely fit with this list. What makes it sadder is that less than 2,000 actually speak the traditional language that doesn't use european invented Te Reo words.
The language advertised isn't the traditional language. It's changed and added new words. The traditional language has less than 2,000 speakers while the whitewashed language has claimed 150,000 with 50,000 who speak it well.
True , is shame that dialects are dying, but still neologisms are necesseary for survival of language and can be use with tradicional word,if core of language is still same we can say is same language as traditional one.
Okay how many video languages are there Siri ...... there are 34890123737833333887789878333394848974388388333333339999878672113233847497331121....20 hours later...3445,344 video game languages
Piraha verbs are complex and it also has tones. According to Wikipedia: "Peter Gordon writes that the language has a very complex verb structure: "To the verb stem are appended up to 15 potential slots for morphological markers that encode aspectual notions such as whether events were witnessed, whether the speaker is certain of its occurrence, whether it is desired, whether it was proximal or distal, and so on. None of the markers encode features such as person, number, tense or gender."" "Pirahã can be whistled, hummed, or encoded in music."
This is a Welsh place name manufactured in the 19th century to be artificially long so as to be able to claim the title of longest place name in Britain. The weatherman there is just showing off for a laugh, there is no meteorological reason for focusing on the town.
Dear WatchMojo I truly enjoyed watching your 10 language Docu here on youtube, I could add many more languages to your list as I come from the middle-east part of the world and if you could do some research on many languages that need to be on your list who are under threat of extinction. yazidi people of northern Iraq, Aramaic language that predates back to ancient Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrianand Chaldean empires, just to name a few. I have been doing my own research of ancient people of the world, have a look at the ancient people of Malaysia who date back to three thousand years history. There are more.
A drunk guy tried to impress me by saying that he understood british, american, canadian and australian... Impressive, right? Our native language is faroese.
As a professional linguist, I'm really impressed at the level of detail you put into this video! Most YT videos on languages only skim the surface, and don't say anything about phonology or grammar. Great job Watch Mojo!
Ktunaxa - a pacific north-west (BC Kootenay/northern Idaho/northwest Montana region) aboriginal language with no known linguistic antecedent. The Ktunaxa nation has approximately 1500 members in 5 communities, with very few speakers as a first language left.
Don Corrigal thank you for bringing this up. My part of the Ktunaxa Nation only has 301 members left in Canada and the United States with our own unique dialect. Even we are in danger today of being assimilated by our upper cousins. Although to this day only my family still can speak the language, build our unique sturgeon nosed canoe and our traditional flat bow amongst being our Nations strongest keepers of out history and culture thanks to our ever defiant grandmother and great grandmother. Another little known fact is our people officially declared war against the US in 1974 led by a woman named Amy Trice. The results that community never had to move and is a win for us without signing a treaty still to this day. Even though the US brought tanks and guns we responded with toll booths and pens. We are a matriarchal society which is another unique aspect of a people where our name Ktunaxa literally means “Licks the Blood” as we licked our weapons off after killing our enemy.
The question that should be asked is: "Why are these languages rare?" For Indigenous languages in North America, it is because European invaders and colonists systematically committed genocide and ethnocide, pointedly trying to erase the languages, cultures and peoples who are the Originals through violence, assimilation and forced removal of their children. This is still ongoing today through policies, laws and practices in favor of European North American benefit, conscience and comfort.
I am going to assume that you are some kind of leftist. You probably disagree with the Europeans replacing the culture and traditions of the Americas but are ok with foreigners doing it in Europe, right?
@@KateeAngel Wrong! Their numbers would not necessarily recover. The fact that they did not bounce back is not evidence that they are continuing to be persecuted.
Cool stuff! Tks for this. So many other languages could be mentioned as suggested in the comments below. The video is billed as "Top RARE languages" which would imply languages with fewest speakers, but actually it is a mish-mash of interesting but unrelated cases: really rare languages (3 living native speakers!), isolated languages (Basque), comeback languages (Welsh), languages with features that are unusual for English speakers (Xhosa and click languages, which are not rare) or of uncommonly complexity (number of phonemes or genders). It gives the false impression that languages with few speakers are disappearing because they are difficult to learn! No language on Earth is too difficult for a native-speaker child to master.
Yodelling (mostly of Austria, south of germany and i guess switzerland) is also a kind of understanding like sildo gomero (whistling) on the first place. there are still people who speak it as language and you can take school lessons to learn it
The language of the Khoisan should also have gotten an honorable mention here. There are two Khoisan dialects. One for the 1/4 million living in Namibia and one for the 16000 living in the Kalahari.
Marco Ayala really? :-) I heard some time ago that there are less and less people talking it, but I like the idea that it's still strong, it sounds awesome :-)
Why is Scots Gaelic not on there. Never in my life have I met or heard of a fellow speaker, it's kinda sad. It's also strange how I speak the language but I've never had a conversation with it.
I'm fascinated by the study of languages. I'm amazed by people that can speak multiple languages. Some of these languages will "become extinct", meaning that sometime in the future they won't be used for communication anymore, but at least they're recorded so we know of their existence. There must have been untold thousands of languages that have disappeared into the mists of time that are really extinct. This is s very interesting video. Thank you.
I find it disheartening that there are more people in America who speak a foreign language, than there are Native Americans who speak their own tongue. Colonialization at its finest.
How about Sater Frisian (Seeltersk) a language still spoken by 1500 - 2000 people in Lower Saxony (Germany) and the last remnant of the East Frisian language? How about Sorbian a Slavian language spoken by ca 50 000 people in Brandenburg and Saxony (Germany)? How about the Ladin dialects spoken by ca. 30 000 people in some Northern Italian Alpes valleys? How about Manx Gaelic a language which died out 1974 and now, thanks to revival, is spoken by ca 2000 people? These are REALLY rare European languages and there are several more expecially in Eastern Europe.
Luna Guyt - "Sjores87 then you can give they other provence a language! 😂😂" It exists, it's called Provençal. :) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proven%C3%A7al_dialect
So cool the 1st one, it's the simple, extremely effective things that makes me realize how awesome humans are, complex technologies does't surprise me at all anymore, but simple things such as a sound wave that can be heard from miles away or a simple mechanism that can make a ship cross the whole ocean without losing it's way are very, very impressive. Seriously, we didn't conquered the world without a reason, we are awesome, i can't imagine other smart animals doing such things.
My parents speak the language of dissapointment which was passed on from their parents and one day i will pass on to my children.
Lmao although its not funny. I no longer have parents but remember this was so! Nor do I have children to pass it on to.
Vai Mayob, don't!
I’m so sorry but I burst out laughing! But you’re beautiful so you’ll make it. X
No that just the Jewish language. My mom spoke it also. 😜❤️
Lolol yep mine too
The last fluent speaker of the Wichita language (related to the Pawnee your video mentioned) died just a few years ago. I have heard the Euchee language has just a few speakers still living. American Indian languages are going extinct constantly. In the early 20th century the U. S. government took children to boarding schools, and punished them if they were using their own language. You could have a list of the 50 rarest languages in the world and never leave the Americas.
Your sentence second from the last is so sad. Why would a government do that. Its more or the same with genocide. :(
Exactly... I'm Navajo but I'm fluent in my language as well. But that's true what you said about the 50 rarest ones and never leave the Americas
I believe Papua New Guinea has even more rare languages. But many of them are not dying, they are rare only because tribes that speak them are small and isolated. Also there are many languages in Eurasia which are as rare as Native American
Or indigenous Australian languages
@@johanneswohler5476
I share your dismay. It's so heartbreaking.
. To strangle the words of a people thru outlawing the language is like the destruction of ancient archaeological sites by the radicals of ISIS & the Taliban. Or the burning of books...which happens in every historical epoch.
How is Xhosa a rare language? Isolated but definitely not rare.
I agree. Icelandic is much rarer and endangered by English.
@@patrickklocek3332 even more rare: Faroese
Xhosa is one of the national languages here in South Africa, and not that hard to speak. I learned to get around in Xhosa over about 3 months of working alongside Xhosa people
@@michaeldschutte You're right. Xhosa isn't rare at all.
Im surprised that Afrikaans isn't in this list. :)
My university offers a course in Nootka, a language spoken by indigenous people on Vancouver Island with about 8000 speakers. It's nearly dying out, or at least was at some point, but there's a program to save it as well. I thought about taking it and even if I went for a more practical language for now, I may learn it later if the course is still offered then.
Ray Tonks good luck! That’s a difficult language!
How does Welsh rate but not Scots Gaelic, which is probably a lot rarer?
John Doe exactly, welsh is going strong again with about 500,000 speakers in Wales alone
Approximate figures for 2018:
Welsh: 500,000 and pretty steady over 50 years
Scots Gaelic: 57,000 and dropping like, well, a caber (75% in a century)
To be fair Scots Gaelic is no longer considered a dying language anymore it's revived but i still agree it should be in the list
Scots gaelic has essentially stopped declining but it's not growing.
I'm trying to learn Scottish Gealic. 😣
Xhosa is spoken by 7.6 million people.... so rare!
Ruan It's rare in way of wierd sound (clicks one), is not in population.
Bateta ikaka abantu
Zikhona why is it so much easier to speak Xhosa than to write it, I can never write down what I'm saying
sorry, I was just calling out watchmojo, they don't seem to do much research, as the title states "Rare Languages Still Spoken Around the World" yet xhosa is still very popular in SA. but i agree with you its beautiful and unique language.
Ruan
7.6 compared to over 7.5 billion people worldwide.
The Sami languages were completely forgotten from the list. They boast around 20-30,000 native speakers mostly in the Scandinavian Lapland. It actually comprises of multiple distinct Sami languages, back from a time where villages were so isolated in the arctic cold that they had their own languages altogether, and the 30,000 speakers are all these 10 or so languages combined.
Well, seeing as the people themselves are almost extinct, with only lots of blond blue eyed swedes calling themselves "sami", it's not strange the language is dying too...
Real sami's look a lot like indigenous Americans. Just peruse old photos, not a single blond or blue eyed sami at all...
Zathaghil
They didn't look like native americans at all but it is true that Sweden and Norway often forcefully assimilated the sami to their nations and nowadays there isn't a single Sami without any "germanic blood". However in Sweden we actually practiced a policy which said that "Sami shall remain sami" as a way to not mix Swedes and sami people but that was a bit too late for the Sami I guess.
But Norway actually has the biggest population of Sami and they were very keen on assimilating them rather than keeping them away.
The swedish samis has 3 big dialects, the east, west and middle sides, my granddad spoke the west dialect that was a little diffrent from the main west dialect. Because his mom came from a small city/villige that was between the middle and west side of sweden.
Well so is Manchurian. I mean, although ethnic Manchu are quite numerous, the fact they took over China and established the Qing dynasty saw them gradually being assimilated by the Chinese to the point where only a handful (less than 500) are native speakers now. If anything, more Han Chinese speak Manchurian than Manchu, due to the need for some of the scholars to study.
Sami people do not look like Indigenous Americans at all. They look completely different from any tribe I can think of. (none of my two look like them)
9. "With about 140 genders-"
Must be a popular language on Tumblr
Kyotosomo different gender
It means grammatical gender not natural
Lavernius Tucker It was a joke you daft.
Jack Indzonka Why do you care?
Lavernius Tucker Idk
They mention Welsh but ignore Manx and Cornish, which are much rarer (about 1800 Manx speakers and 400 Cornish)
And Scottish Gaelic
Also Manx became extinct in the 70s but was revived. I don't know how it is today, but it must still be rare.
Didn't Cornish become extinct in the 1700s until it was revived as well?
Yeah those are forgotten...
I think because welsh is the most popular for some reason
Cornish should’ve gotten an honourable mention
yup im cornish and i agree lol
I think Cornish is not so much rare as extinct.
I am Irish and wondering is cornish easy for me to learn
I thought that was a joke...-
The funny thing is that the example of basque you have put in this video is Bizkaiera, one of the dialects that Basque has. The language changes a lot depending of which part of the basque country you go. I speak it totally differently for example.
Common in all languages, I think. I put a Cherokee language app on my phone, and while scrolling through it, I was like, "WHO THE HELL PRONOUNCES IT THAT WAY?" Oooohhhhhh....Eastern Band...psht.
Aniyunwiya Ageya what variety of Cherokee do you speak?
Western band. Even then, confusion arises between western band dialects...but where Western says, "ociyo" or "ciyo" (Hello), Eastern band pronounces it "shiyo"....they're also the smallest band, due to the Trails of Tears, as the larger percentage was removed from their eastern homeland.
Aniyunwiya Ageya that’s neat!! Which script do you use when you write in Cherokee?
In Navarre, it's different, too, right?
Oh boy, this is a title sure to bring out the "well actually" crowd.
Well, actually...
No language is more “difficult” than another, it’s all based on how distant and different the language is from one’s mother tongue that determines the difficulty of one learning.
This is a common misconception and thanks for clarification. I, as a Serbo-Croatian speaker can learn Polish far (far far far) easier than I would Chechen. A Chechen speaker however, would easily learn Archi, while learning Cree would give him more trouble. Cree speakers, on the other hand, would learn Ojibwe far easier than !Xóõ, or Serbo-Croatian. It's not just about genetic relationship either. An English speaker would probably learn Indonesian more easily than Russian, even though Russian is related to English, while Indonesian is not. In this case, English's phonology and morphology are closer to that of Indonesian than Russian. I hope you've understood something from my examples. Look up all the languages I mentioned, some of them have interesting phonologies and/or grammar. Don't look at !Xóõ's consonants though. If you want to stay sane
@@wtc5198
Thanks so much for your input! I’m feeling adventurous so I might check out !Xóō 😂
@@jeffaholics2289 Archi has an interesting phonology too
Thanks. I guess it's my own fault for even clicking on a WatchMojo video, but this video is filled with so many misconceptions and mistakes :/
Se você acha que não existe lingua difícil, tente conjugar os verbos da lingua portuguesa 😅 Sou brasileiro estudioso e mesmo assim me confundo na conjugação de certos tempos verbais 😮
Some Indigenous Languages should have included like Hawaiian and I only say that is because the missionaries forbade its use and by the early 1900's is was rarely used.There was a comeback as more schools taught it in the classroom but to this day my mother, father and us kids (we're in our 50's and 60's) do not know how to speak except some words and in Pidgin English. My G-pa and his siblings spoke fluent Hawaiian and I could understand but not speak it back. How sad. Do NOT let another culture override yours or risk losing your Culture to assimilation.
Audreen Lima-Connors Except that we now have Olelo TV and Hawaiian language schools and more. Are you even in Hawaii now? Olelo Hawaii is everywhere - even in the new student learning descriptors for the DOE.
You can now learn Hawai'ian via Duolingo! So exciting. :)
I don’t speak kanienkeha or Icelandic so I’m a failure
SweetSirenia Please don’t say “Hawai’ian” it’s just not correct. Hawaiian isn’t a Hawaiian word and neither is Hawai’ian.
If you want to put it short white people took our land over and forced us to speak English
The Ainu language in Hokkaido is up there with the most endangered languages
*Number 1. Desiigner*
I just joking I can't fucking understand him as well....
Kjreddragon27 Williams lol
Hold this Gigantic W
#1 should have been "Whale." Another rare language spoken by Dory in Finding Nemo!!
An ancestor in a body that look 40+ but has only been on earth for 20 years...
Kjreddragon Williams27Teku LMAO
In 2003, Jérawr Asáwer the last Kaweskar died here in Chile, The Kaweskar and The Selknam people were erradicated by the Chilean government in the south of Chile, but the government has refused to acknowledge their genocide. With her death, the Kaweskar language is lost forever.
Wikipedia states that there are 12 native Kaweskar speakers as of 2006.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaw%C3%A9sqar_language
Now it is spoken by the flaites.
Another very rare language is Romansch. It's one of the four official languages of Switzerland and is only spoken by around 60'000 people.
True
i have a swiss friend who said that she had almost never heard it in spite of being borne and raised in Switzerland
That is because it confines to a small part of the canton of Graubünden (one of 26 cantons), wich is mostly coverd by a mountain range and so has lowest inhabitant density.
There are some speakers in the Italian-speaking Canton of Ticino, too; though not many and diminishing as years go by. Radio Ticino used to have limited Romansch language broadcasts a few hours per week.
Yes its really sad that its kinda dying out. But maybe we will see a revival of romansch in the next few years.
Why only stop at Archi? All the languages of Caucasus are rare, unique and isolate. Including North-West Caucasian languages: Circassian(58 letters alphabet) Abkhazian and extinct Ubykh(88 letters alphabet); North-East Caucasian: Nakh-Daghestani (Chechen, Ingush, Avar, Dargin, Lezgin, etc; and South Caucasian Kartvelian languages.
Put in a word for Udi, ancient Caucasian Albanian. Used to be the third written language in Caucacus alongside Georgian and Armenian (and you might not count Armenian, as it's probably a Bronze Age offshoot of Mycenaean Greek).
So: Udi. It's a thing.
Bats has only 3000 speakers at the most.
That's awesome! I am Friulan / Furlane. Crazy, never thought there'd be any sort-of large scale recognition for our language. Wild! Thanks, WatchMojo for this exposure. As we like to say, Grasie.
I'm a simple man. I see Dances with Wolves, I click
i really dislike the choice though, souix, comanche, apache cherokee, and even cheyenne are spoken more than pawnee, pawnee is big but not as big as the previous languages listed with comanche and apache even being used for military codes here in the u.s.
Sam, that's the thing with a lot of languages. There's about 7,000 languages in the world, but we lose one every two weeks or so. Keep fighting the good fight and learn.
Silverbolt Bluefire Pawnee, Wichita and Arikara are all close in language. They are spoken more within homes. I grew up with my uppit speaking fluent Pawnee
+Silverbolt Bluefire Rarity is the entire emphasis of the video.
Maritza Piccarillo No, I don’t want non natives speaking the language.
I've actually been to a village of Piraha (Amazonas state, Brazil), and it's actually pronounced with the accent on the last syllable, not the first. Also, the last letter has a tilde (~) over it, which gives it a nasal tone.
Regarding the Basques, you can't get between Spain and France, since they share a border. I believe what you wanted to say is that they're found in both countries.
Do you speak pirahã?
pirahã is phonetically a really weird language
I'm bilingual, I speak English and profanity.
Life Starter Pack you need to learn third one like sarcasm
Life Starter Pack I speak Dutch,English, German, French, Spanish,Portuguese, Chinese and am now learning for Japanese. :) do i get a cookie now ?
Life Starter Pack LOL! btw your channel is great!
Johanneslol11 For real? How long did that take you?
Johanneslol11 prove it
This video made me realize the beauty we share in our diversity
Mass immigration and multiculturism is what destroys true diversity, it is like taking all the colours of the rainbow and mixing them until you have one lifeless colour, see what happens with English coming and replacing indigenous and unique languages
Irish(and Scottish Gaelic) and Coptic(direct decendant of ancient Egyptian) should have been mentioned
It's the latest stage of the native Egyptian language so yeah, it's the direct descendant.
@Soraya #BlackSectorHistorian it's...
They literally invest coptic first to translate the hieroglyphics !
Coptic is sadly a dead language
I can speak Irish Gaelic
And cornish, breton, manx
I speak Nipmuc, which has only about 15-20 living speakers.
speak some of it.
@@puffcatco cl
Can you speak it (obviously if you know it)?
Write something then
I know this is a comment from 4 years ago but I live in Massachusetts and I want to learn Nipmuc because I am interested in the pre colonial history and languages of New England do you know anywhere I can learn it
There’s a girl at my school who lives in America for half of the year and then she leaves to go live in the Basque Country. She can speak English, Spanish, and Basque. When she came back to America she brought back a few friends who were from that country and we got to meet them, it was pretty cool.
I would said "She can speak English, Castilian and Euskera (Basque)".
Thanks
I am surprised not to see the mention of Manx while Welsh has been mentionned.
The other is Romanche, some people still speak this language in Switzerland.
Friulian with 600.000 people. Rare? I don't think so
Yeah it is because actually 1,5 million people can understand it but only 300.000 people speaks it every day and about 85% of these is old.
@@topc6444 your data are wrong. About 1.500.000 can understand it (900.000 in Friuli and the others all around the world) and more or less 600.000 can speak it. So I mean, 600.000 is not that bad
@@pietrotriscari7905I'm from Friuli and I kno what I'm saying. It will be beautiful if 600.000 people could speak it every day
@@topc6444 I'm from Friuli too. Out of 1 milion Friulians, between 50% and 60% can speak it, that's what regional agencies say. And I believe it 'cause in my area, for example, nearly everyone who is 20 yo or older can speak it, and also a lot of young people use it (I'm 17 and in my crew everyone speaks it). So, I mean, maybe in Udine, Pordenone and Gorizia or near the border with Veneto and Trieste way less people speak friulian and someone barely understands it, but on the mountains and in the countryside 60% is definitely close to the actual situation (think of Carnia, where I would say that the % of friulian spealers is actually higher than 60%)
"Ten or less phonemes" - grammatically wrong
"Ten phonemes or fewer" - grammatically correct
Amen
Hey WatchMojo, thank for citing my mothertongue, or marilenghe, as we say in Friulian! ;-)
In the US, there should be a bilingual equal opportunity experiment, of Native languages. Depending on the area . Where there are Sioux Natives teach the language in public school. Huron , Mohegan, revitalize the true American languages keep them alive.
Except most "Sioux" would smack ya for saying that. It's Lakota, Dakota, Nakoda...
Aniyunwiya Ageya This made me laugh because you are correct 🤣 I am Lakota, btw.
I completely agree! My family is from the Menominee tribe, and the Menominee language is nearly extinct. I would love to learn it, but I don't know how :(
Perhaps more importantly, teach the TRUE history of the Native American peoples...the betrayal, lies, genocide and subjugation by the US Govt., then move on from there. Learning the languages would be the reward for learning about the rich cultural history of these people.
@@PanamaBob1942 So you mean learn how shitty whites were to the Natives? You can find that at any US university.
Awesome vid!
I loved learning a little bit of Cree up north in the NWT working at Snap lake Diamond mine. Tanse' Ni Stow.(hello/welcome, my brother, my friend) I absolutely loved getting to know folks better, hearing legends and tales, and hearing and learning a bit here and there. Beautiful. It helped me grow spiritually, but woefully, I know so little, but sure loved hearing it and learning bits and pieces here and there, still woeful, but was so good to say such things to coworkers and new friends.
I’m so glad they have Taa on this list, what a remarkable language! Although, some of the sample interviews are of N|uu speakers.
I think!! I don’t actually know. I just remember seeing some of those interviews on other videos about preserving the N|uu language.
By the way, what’s Xhosa doing on this list? It’s alive and well.
Try tasalgi which i speak ( language of the cherokee)
lord blood do you also write in the Cherokee script?
Which dialect?
lord blood I am trying to learn as well
@watchmojo do a top 10 indigenous languages segment
Aboriginals of Australia many different types through out Aus but most are extinct now sadly.
Harley Lyons that is true, we lost most of our languages. But, we have some left which is great. My family speaks 4 aboriginal languages, it's really down to the younger generation to keep what we have alive. But, thank you for mentioning our language situation. It means a lot
Harley Lyons because white people.
Harley Lyons Thank the Brits for that.
Alonso---Yes, because just as they tried to keep the Irish and Welsh from speaking their own languages, they did so in any other country they invaded, which is why Pawnee is on the list (and all Native American languages should be). They stole children, put them in boarding schools far from their parents, forced them to speak English, punished them harshly if they spoke their own language.
White people stole and adapted so many things from other races
Im a basque speaker, and I entered this video because it got in my recommended, didn't thought it would be here! What a surprise!
I love your channel. So informed. Thank you.
Lmfao the “sentilese” part is just a Brazilian guy speaking Portuguese. This video is a joke
The thing is that sentinel is a little island where there is a tribe that attacks anyone who approaches them. They live in the stone age and reject any contact with the outer world so we don't know what their language is like, but we know they must have a language different to any other. The video they put was part of a documentary.
I can speak full-on Gibber, while others can only speak Gibber-ish.
Zu Please, demonstrate.
Same
What? Lol I can speak full on gibber lol
Surprised Hawaiian wasn't at least honorable mention.
trenton oshiro True, it's dying out.
There are thousands of rare languages so this list is kind of bogus
I think you'll find Scot's Gaelic and the rarer Manx Gaelic, and Cornish should also be on the list.
This is the best WatchMojo video I've seen by far. Well done.
Sarcasm is probably the only language that almost any human being can learn but few intimately understand it.
Yeah,right
In my country there are 22 lenguages. Many might be extinct soon. Some of them are only talked in small towns. Some of the 22 are Achi, Akateco, Chuj, Itza. But the principals are Spanish, K'iche and Kaqchiquel.
mostly Maya?
zimriel Yes, mostly become from the maya ethnic group. There are four ethnic groups in the country.
You must be from Guatemala!
@@cristinadiaz4774 I should said castilian. Not spanish.
Txetxu, no sabía que llamases al italiano, toscano, y al frances, parisino.
My language is really small too
It’s called Karen in Southeast Asia
In Burma and Thailand mostly
I have heard of that, do some of the women elongate their necks
Does your language complain to the manager?
my Friend speaks mandinga, it's a small language in Ghambia. I said to my friend that he needs to write something in his language because they don't have official writing and my friend learn to write when he was 3 years old.
Bts_trxsh 829 Anyone called Karen speaks a language called Entitled
I can speak karen: give your soul at my kids, they wanna play with it
Friulan here from Pordenone, glad to see the language represented here.
So nice to see Silbo Gomero at No 1! I witnessed a delightful demonstration of it on La Gomera last summer! Unforgettable!
For this list maybe you should add ESKAYA. Eskaya is the only LANGUAGE ISOLATE spoken in the Philippines but a small community in the island of Bohol. The language is very different from any Philippine language or even Austronesian language. It also has its own writing system and its phonology is very strange.
Eskaya is taught as a subject in that community and is the liturgical language of the Philippine Independent Catholic Church members of the Eskaya tribe.
I feel blessed to be Welsh and able to speak it because England has so much to do with our education not many people know how to speak it I only know 4 people and there all family members I live in South Wales
If you were to say that my welsh grandfather was or did anything english he would go for his old shotgun and hunt you down, no matter how far from Shewsbury you are ( and many there would join him )
Shout out to my Welsh brothers and Sisters 🏴🏴
Cymru Am Byth
I speak english,american,canadian,australian and new zealand.
Joseph Stalin you speak country eh?
No Russian?
You polyglot you, keep up the good work because in about 150-200 year we Americans and the people of England will not understand a word each other say's. pretty much a fact unless some event happens to make the language of english go into a retrograde. But you did forget irish. They speak english too. I lived there for 2 years and it took about 2 months for my brain to acclimate to the Irish form of English so that I could understand them. But after that, no matter how thick the accent was i could understand and carry on a conversation.
DINAHLUCIA he speaks Georgian
Wow ha 😆
Very interesting. Ty
Nice idea, but lousy. The narrator sometimes NEVER stops talking so you don't hear THE LANGUAGE at hand at ALL!
the common problem of this channel. the narrator never stops talking.
You could have mentioned Breton, Scots Gaelic, Manx, Lapp, numerous native American tongues.
And irish gaelic .Technically manx is dead though its still spoken,however when the last native speaker has died a language is considered dead
All of the male speakers of Ponca have died. I believe there may still be some female speakers of the language left, though.
here in central michigan we have a native american program for very young children to teach them anishinaabemowin/ojibwe
well, I consider Manx an Old Irish dialect, so not dead as long as Irish (and Scottish) still live
the last true native speaker, but there are over a hundred new native speakers, there is an entirely Manx immersion primary school(the bunsçhoil) and a largish population of fluent children
Amazing list, including two languages from my country :)
There is also Älvdal found in a valley on the boarder of Norway and Sweden in 2015 (it was recognized as a distinct language, not just a dialect). It is spoken by less than 4,000 people, but is being studied scholarly.
That's not Sentinelese. I'm assuming that's an indigenous language native to one of the tribes in the Amazon based off the image you used. Sentinelese is based in the Andaman Islands thus not only is the language you're playing not the right one but neither is the footage you're showing. There is little to NO understanding of the Sentinelese language nor of the Sentinelese people or culture. For further info: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sentinelese_language
billiejbob You are totally correct.
I think since there most likely isn't any recordings of good quality having the language heard they just shared a clip of of them instead
@@devonmunn5728 You seemed to have missed the part in the OP's comment where he points out that is not video footage of Sentinelese, but an Amazonian tribe. It's not that they got the language wrong, it's that they showed the wrong people.
@@WILD__THINGS I thought they meant the audio not the pictures
@@WILD__THINGS I apologize for misinterpreting their comment
Basque is my mother language.
Asier Ardanza
Assemble my brother
Jake De La Cuesta what? sorry I don't underestand you jaja
Asier Ardanza
Yo dijo nosotros sommos Euskaldunak, una familia grande. Usted y yo.
Jake De La Cuesta a bale jajaja, perdon. El ingles no es lo mio jaja
Basque was widely spoken on the West coast of Newfoundland, Canada in the 18th and 19th Centuries. It was also spoken by some people in Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon until the 1950s.
I speak welsh lol
da i weld un arall
Simply Olivia saaame! Or should I say Fi hefyd
Shwmae
Fi hefyd!
A fi
8:36 Bars, son.
Seriously, though, all these languages sound so cool. I wish I could learn the first one, though. It would come in handy.
I don't speak any other language than English, but I've been fascinated by other languages that have unusual structures or regional peculiarities. Years ago I read about a woman anthropologist who lived with and studied the language of, an Aboriginal tribe in far north Queensland. She found that while they had over a hundred words for different directions, there wasn't one word that described a person being lost. The most surprising thing of all though was that the tribe had two distinct dialects in their language - one for the men and one for the women!
Dang, Te Reo didn't even get a mention. That's how rare that is ;). With less than 150,000 speakers, and only 50,000 who speak it well, it would definitely fit with this list. What makes it sadder is that less than 2,000 actually speak the traditional language that doesn't use european invented Te Reo words.
Why is the last sadder?
Compared to Karelian which has 36,000 speakers, not so rare...
The language advertised isn't the traditional language. It's changed and added new words. The traditional language has less than 2,000 speakers while the whitewashed language has claimed 150,000 with 50,000 who speak it well.
True , is shame that dialects are dying, but still neologisms are necesseary for survival of language and can be use with tradicional word,if core of language is still same we can say is same language as traditional one.
Very forward thinking you have there, and I do agree. Traditions don't really die, they just expand.
Ooh ooh! Do top 10 fictional video game languages!
yeah let’s do it
Okay how many video languages are there Siri ...... there are 34890123737833333887789878333394848974388388333333339999878672113233847497331121....20 hours later...3445,344 video game languages
Hylian
Halo reach native language?
Lol joke its actually Hungarian
Andrew Haase Simlish
I'm basque and i speak basque hahaha proud to apppear in this vid.
Juan Camilo Caballero
I'm Basque but don't live in País Vasco, let me know if you know any of my Etchepare family ;)
I know 1 word in Basque, it’s “Xavier” (My name) written like “Exte Berria” meaning “New Home”
Piraha verbs are complex and it also has tones. According to Wikipedia:
"Peter Gordon writes that the language has a very complex verb structure: "To the verb stem are appended up to 15 potential slots for morphological markers that encode aspectual notions such as whether events were witnessed, whether the speaker is certain of its occurrence, whether it is desired, whether it was proximal or distal, and so on. None of the markers encode features such as person, number, tense or gender.""
"Pirahã can be whistled, hummed, or encoded in music."
What about the Maori language
kia ora e hoa :)
K n o c k e d L o o s e na I'd say the maori language is still pretty strong
K n o c k e d L o o s e
Does anyone speak it natively, considering that there are no full blooded Maoris?
It's the most spoken Polynesian language, so... 💁♀️
tacos mexicanstyle sure does. Tuhoe often use it as their first language
7:27 WTF?!
Cymru am Byth! :)
I believe they shorten it to Llanfair :)
Usually known as Llanfair P.G., Llanfairpwll or in the long form Llanfairpwllgwyngych. The name you see on the map is only for tourists.
This is a Welsh place name manufactured in the 19th century to be artificially long so as to be able to claim the title of longest place name in Britain. The weatherman there is just showing off for a laugh, there is no meteorological reason for focusing on the town.
Heraclyteyy Sylvestreyy I am NOT goin there
i speak welsh as a first language :)
themusic6 cymru am byth
N7 Blood Pack danin yma o hyd , serch agweddau gwael at y iaith ,cymru am byth :)
themusic6 tir y ddraig a chartref i ddewr hir, pam y byddwch yn byw yn nhir ein tadau
themusic6 sethwyr
Wheee in Wales do they primaruly speak Welsh?
Dear WatchMojo I truly enjoyed watching your 10 language Docu here on youtube, I could add many more languages to your list as I come from the middle-east part of the world and if you could do some research on many languages that need to be on your list who are under threat of extinction. yazidi people of northern Iraq, Aramaic language that predates back to ancient Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Assyrianand Chaldean empires, just to name a few. I have been doing my own research of ancient people of the world, have a look at the ancient people of Malaysia who date back to three thousand years history. There are more.
When WatchMojo thinks being a linguist is about learning a foreign language... :-/
Well hey these videos did get me motivated to get into linguistics
I can speak English, American and Britsh
I guess you can't speak Canadian or Australian then huh?
The dingo ate my baby and left it's remains in the boot of my car, eh.
You obviously could
DYXZI What about Texan, New Yawk, and Brooklynese?
A drunk guy tried to impress me by saying that he understood british, american, canadian and australian... Impressive, right?
Our native language is faroese.
As a professional linguist, I'm really impressed at the level of detail you put into this video! Most YT videos on languages only skim the surface, and don't say anything about phonology or grammar. Great job Watch Mojo!
Ktunaxa - a pacific north-west (BC Kootenay/northern Idaho/northwest Montana region) aboriginal language with no known linguistic antecedent. The Ktunaxa nation has approximately 1500 members in 5 communities, with very few speakers as a first language left.
Don Corrigal thank you for bringing this up. My part of the Ktunaxa Nation only has 301 members left in Canada and the United States with our own unique dialect. Even we are in danger today of being assimilated by our upper cousins. Although to this day only my family still can speak the language, build our unique sturgeon nosed canoe and our traditional flat bow amongst being our Nations strongest keepers of out history and culture thanks to our ever defiant grandmother and great grandmother. Another little known fact is our people officially declared war against the US in 1974 led by a woman named Amy Trice. The results that community never had to move and is a win for us without signing a treaty still to this day. Even though the US brought tanks and guns we responded with toll booths and pens. We are a matriarchal society which is another unique aspect of a people where our name Ktunaxa literally means “Licks the Blood” as we licked our weapons off after killing our enemy.
Very cool!
I'm a Xhosa, in case you don't believe me "Ndizoku qhawula uqhoqhoqho kwedini". 🇿🇦 Proudly from South Africa
2:45 I live in Alaska and there are quite a few people I know that speak Yupik
The question that should be asked is: "Why are these languages rare?" For Indigenous languages in North America, it is because European invaders and colonists systematically committed genocide and ethnocide, pointedly trying to erase the languages, cultures and peoples who are the Originals through violence, assimilation and forced removal of their children. This is still ongoing today through policies, laws and practices in favor of European North American benefit, conscience and comfort.
I am going to assume that you are some kind of leftist. You probably disagree with the Europeans replacing the culture and traditions of the Americas but are ok with foreigners doing it in Europe, right?
@@KateeAngel Wrong! Their numbers would not necessarily recover. The fact that they did not bounce back is not evidence that they are continuing to be persecuted.
Yawn. The idiot who is desperately trying to turn everything into "The white man is evil" always has to show up at some point.
Yay Welsh made it on here, that made me so happy.
Cool stuff! Tks for this. So many other languages could be mentioned as suggested in the comments below. The video is billed as "Top RARE languages" which would imply languages with fewest speakers, but actually it is a mish-mash of interesting but unrelated cases: really rare languages (3 living native speakers!), isolated languages (Basque), comeback languages (Welsh), languages with features that are unusual for English speakers (Xhosa and click languages, which are not rare) or of uncommonly complexity (number of phonemes or genders). It gives the false impression that languages with few speakers are disappearing because they are difficult to learn! No language on Earth is too difficult for a native-speaker child to master.
Yodelling (mostly of Austria, south of germany and i guess switzerland)
is also a kind of understanding like sildo gomero (whistling) on the first place.
there are still people who speak it as language and you can take school lessons to learn it
I know a few words in Hidatsa. Only a handful of fluent speakers left
CAn u do Top 10 Oldest Languages in the World
Hebrew, Chinese, Arabic.
Done.
Fool's Requiem that's 3
Arabic is not that old. Assyrian and Aramaic are older Semitic languages along with Hebrew.
I will go with !Kung, Lithuanian, Icelandic, Basque, Georgian, Saami, Tamil ... that's my addition.
Nope, a bunch of Taiwanese languages, such as Tayal, Tsou, and Saisiyat are older than Chinese or Arabic. Hebrew, I'm not sure about.
2:37 sounds exactly like Klingon language in new star trek: discovery.
I know right?
No. Klingon sounds a lot more like Tlingit than Yupik. Chaak na! Haat Yi Adi! Chooknadee Haat Yi Adi!
Q'apla
Hannah Matthau
Yup'ik is related to Inuktitut
very interesting! especially the last. i have never heard of a language like that.
are there any speakers of Manx or Maltese left?
The language of the Khoisan should also have gotten an honorable mention here. There are two Khoisan dialects. One for the 1/4 million living in Namibia and one for the 16000 living in the Kalahari.
We speak Maori. It's so rare I didn't make the list lol
Maori isn't rare. You guys are the most spoken Polynesian language.
Samoan is, Maori is second.
What about Gaelic?
Konsti G. Do you mean Irish or Scottish.
Yeah how did neither of them get in the list
I had an Irish friend who said it's still very common in the countryside of both Ireland and Scotland
Marco Ayala really? :-) I heard some time ago that there are less and less people talking it, but I like the idea that it's still strong, it sounds awesome :-)
Konsti G. I m Irish and we Learn it in school
Why is Scots Gaelic not on there. Never in my life have I met or heard of a fellow speaker, it's kinda sad. It's also strange how I speak the language but I've never had a conversation with it.
Give up of English and talk in your language. You will forxe your compatriot to speak it. Otherwise do not continue the conversation in English
I'm fascinated by the study of languages. I'm amazed by people that can speak multiple languages. Some of these languages will "become extinct", meaning that sometime in the future they won't be used for communication anymore, but at least they're recorded so we know of their existence. There must have been untold thousands of languages that have disappeared into the mists of time that are really extinct. This is s very interesting video. Thank you.
I find it disheartening that there are more people in America who speak a foreign language, than there are Native Americans who speak their own tongue. Colonialization at its finest.
Navajo language is hard but you get use to it
Its similar to other Native languages so if you know any other native american languages its easier to learn.
Friulan here, keep it alive!
How about "Fries" a language spoken by people living in the provence Friesland of The Netherlands (spoken by 400.000 people)
Sjores87 then you can give they other provence a language! 😂😂
Luna Guyt frisian predates the Dutch language
How about Sater Frisian (Seeltersk) a language still spoken by 1500 - 2000 people in Lower Saxony (Germany) and the last remnant of the East Frisian language?
How about Sorbian a Slavian language spoken by ca 50 000 people in Brandenburg and Saxony (Germany)?
How about the Ladin dialects spoken by ca. 30 000 people in some Northern Italian Alpes valleys?
How about Manx Gaelic a language which died out 1974 and now, thanks to revival, is spoken by ca 2000 people?
These are REALLY rare European languages and there are several more expecially in Eastern Europe.
Also the closest living relative to English, with maybe the exception of Scots.
Luna Guyt - "Sjores87 then you can give they other provence a language! 😂😂"
It exists, it's called Provençal. :) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proven%C3%A7al_dialect
So cool the 1st one, it's the simple, extremely effective things that makes me realize how awesome humans are, complex technologies does't surprise me at all anymore, but simple things such as a sound wave that can be heard from miles away or a simple mechanism that can make a ship cross the whole ocean without losing it's way are very, very impressive. Seriously, we didn't conquered the world without a reason, we are awesome, i can't imagine other smart animals doing such things.
what? there is a whistling language in the canari islands too? this is the language they speak in villages of Evia in Greece too! NICE! :D
Wes Studi actually speaking Cherokee in that clip from Dances with Wolves
Makes sense
1. The crew probably went "who cares"
2. Maybe Wes Studi wasn't sure if he could properly speak Pawnee