Thousands of languages are spoken around the world. Yet 80% of humans speak 80 languages, and only 20% speak thousands of other languages. Some languages are more foreign than others with unusual, complex grammatical rules that sound like that. So linguists wanted to find out which languages in the world could be considered exotic.
To establish a list of exotic languages in a more objective way, linguists used data from the World Language Structures (WALS). This huge database brings together the linguistic structures of languages spoken around the world. Instead of relying on their own intuition, linguists compared WALS data for 239 languages from different parts of the world. English is one of the most amazing languages.
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Languages around the world have an average of 25 to 30 phonemes
According to linguists, a language can be considered exotic when it has a large number of different characteristics compared to other languages. That is why English is included in the ranking. In fact, English comes in at 33e Ranking in 239 languages thanks to its characteristics. English is different from more than 80% of other languages studied.
What makes English so strange compared to other dialects? First, the sound of English can be strange to many speakers. WALS identifies unique sounds in languages, also known as phonemes. On average, a language is made up of 25 to 30 phonemes. For example, the South African language Taa has over 100 phonemes, many of which are different types of click sounds. For English, there are about 44 more phonemes than the average.
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English grammar is also different compared to other languages
It has a large number of vowels, more than 11 while other languages have 5 to 6. The 5 vowels in the English alphabet help make twice as many sounds, which explains why it's especially spelled. Complicated. As for consonant sounds, you should know that the “th” we see in “bath” and “bath” is present in less than 10% of the languages listed in the World Language Systems.
On the other hand, English grammar is also particularly different. For example, distinguishing between questions and statements is done by changing the order of words. In a statement, the subject is placed before the verb, as in the sentence “The cat is big.” However, the statement “Is the cat bigger?” This order should be changed to make it a question. “. Besides, A WALS survey Out of 955 languages covered, only 2% have English-like structures for asking questions.
Top 10 Strangest Dialects in the World
According to linguists, the 10 strangest languages spoken in the world are:
- Mixtec (Salkatongo)
- Nenets
- Choctaw
- Tigueo (Mesa Grande)
- Oromo (Harar)
- Kutenai
- Iraq
- Congo
- Eastern Armenian
- German
Source: Corpus Linguistics
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