I’m currently reading about Manchu - I think you should study that. It is agglutinative (you stick modifiers, adjectives, case endings etc on to the root noun to make a huge long word), has lovely SOV word order and about 20 different cases. Of course, it’s a dead language, but one of these days someone will invent a time machine, travel back to 17th century China and need to talk to the head honcho. Who are they going to call then? You’ll be a shoo-in for the job. Plus the script is well cool.
Commas, in this case.
How about learning Taiwanese? It’s available as a class from Chinese Culture University (CCU) located at the intersection of Hoping East Road and Jian Guo South Road.
I DOUBLE DARE you to try Irish. Seriously, just one on-line lesson. You’ll give up after 20 minutes. You think Basque is hard? Try Irish.
If you need a challenge after mastering Chinese, you could try having your hands amputated, gouging out your eyes, and learning sign language. Then learn Tabassaran and Hungarian, but just until you get the case systems down. After that, learn Spanish.
north american native languages. agglutination run riot. (Edit: damn. i just read page 2. snap, insomniac)
Iriquois, Hupa, Apache, Nanook.
if a world war breaks out, you may get a call up as a windtalker. (OK that’s Navaho). but as Frank Black once said, the navaho know…
Thanks for all the suggestions, everyone. I think it would be a bit much to learn all those languages at the same time though. So I’ll stick to learning one a month.
SMG, good tip on the sign language though actually it’s really languages. I’ll start with Nicaraguan.
Commas, in this case.[/quote]Why isn’t there a “groan” smiley? 
The answer is that they’re object-verb-subject languages; the rarest kind. In fact until a few decades ago that combination was believed not to exist in any natural language. I guess it made sense to the designers of Klingon to use this “alien” combination.
Damn, you’re good. And you just saved yourself years of frustration.
How about the language of love, the language of diplomacy, legal language, body language, and figurative language?
Damn, you’re good. And you just saved yourself years of frustration.
How about the language of love, the language of diplomacy, legal language, body language, and figurative language?[/quote]They’ll just have to wait their turn. This afternoon I managed to build a time machine using plans I found on the Internet. I’ll be back in 17th century China learning Manchu if anyone needs me.
[quote=“irishstu”]Honestly, BFM. You believe everything you see on TV. There’s nothing to stop us meeting Klingons in 2011.[/quote]Yes there is, neither the Federation or the Klingons had warp capability then. Only the Vulcans, and possibly the Romulans.
I taught Gerry how to speak Irish last Thursday. He kept falling down on his aras but I had him translating Ecce Romani into the original Irish by tea time.
I’m teaching NIE Ulster-Scots all next week. Doddle.
Frankly I wouldn’t be surprised if joesax invented one of those warp thingies by next week.
[quote=“joesax”]I’ll be back in 17th century China learning Manchu if anyone needs me.[/quote]Came back early. I’m never going there again! I must have gone to the wrong room in the palace while looking for the head honcho, because there was this guy with a big pair of scissors who wanted to remove the family jewels, if you know what I mean! Just managed to escape intact.
So learning Manchu’s a no-go. But at least it gives me time to get to work on the warp thingy.
Did you happen to see these guys?
If so, tell them Rufus wants his phone booth back. And for God’s sake, keep Napoleon away from the ice cream.
[quote=“Joesox”]Just thought I’d let everyone know that I’ve finished learning Chinese now. Vocab, grammar, pragmatics, characters, chengyu, all that classical stuff – finished it all.
Now for my next language. Any suggestions?[/quote]
First time I ever heard someone say they finished learning Chinese.
Learn Russian.
Duolingo has Klingon and High Valyrian now for those so inclined. Still waiting for Thai 
How about mathematics?
