I don't think Korean and Turkish are rare. In Indonesia, many of the youth generations love Korean & Turkish pop culture, and the both languages are getting popular by years.
I’m really happy that in the last 10-15 years it seems like there are more materials available for languages like Vietnamese, Thai, and Turkish that have a sizable number of speakers but attract relatively few learners outside of their immediate region. When I first took a stab at Vietnamese around 2005-2008 I really suffered from a lack of quality resources but in 2014 I started again and there started to be more resources available. Cantonese is another that I have had some trouble with resources, but that’s gotten a little better as well. While I don’t think I’ve ever met another serious learner of these languages IRL, the cost of offering materials on these languages has gone down somewhat, which is good for those few of us who are really serious about it. I think studying these midsized languages might be the best because there are a lot of speakers and a sizeable amount of content, but little competition from other learners and a lot of free or low cost native content. Languages that are a lot rarer I probably wouldn’t learn unless I had a personal connection or I lived there. Recently I’ve been doing a lot of work on Spanish and it’s a totally different experience. While I am motivated and it’s a great change of pace, I understand what you’re saying about trying to be different.
Great channel ! I am learning Icelandic and so far all the Icelanders I talked to (but one) have been delighted when I started speaking, even at the beginning. Sometimes I feel it's like speaking a secret language. I was having lunch with some Icelandic friends in the summer of 2021 and after a few passages, the waitress couldn't resist asking what language we were speaking. I enjoyed it!
I love your channel, I am learning Turkish too, it's such a fun language after you get past the "hard" phase... I have now begun korean - wow I will be taking a looong time with it, it's very interesting but tough! Makes turkish seem easy, but strangely turkish does help with korean cause grammatically similarities, the fun of stacking languages 😉
Once you internalize vowel harmony and affixes to the point of being second nature, you can finally start accumulating vocab 😂 Also, it's funny you say that because I did Korean first and then Turkish, and I thought Korean was easier than Turkish because there's less transformations.
@@studywithalex Really?! You thought Korean was easier than Turkish?? That gives me lots of hope then! My Turkish is pretty comfortable now as I have made it to the vocab acquisition phase... but I am very new at Korean and I am finding just the sounds of it so hard, and still getting used to script as well - I wonder if I will ever learn it! The fact that you thought it easier than Turkish gives me hope then!!! :) I hope after this overwhelming phase of getting used to so many new exotic sounds I will settle in and start enjoying it (fingers crossed!)... after getting these two languages better I was hoping to maybe start Japanese in 2024 - as you also know Japanese, do you think Korean helps much with Japanese? I know of course it doesn't help with all the Kanji characters, but does it help otherwise? I have heard many conflicting views on this, would love your opinion, Alex, cheers :))
I am going to be learning Latin in the Year 2024. I will have a much easier time with Latin because I am learning Portuguese currently. To me learning rare languages is a valuable skill to pursue, just like sports memorabilia, rare coins, rare art has monetary value.👊💕💥
I am a Slavic linguist and once I visited Slovenia for the first time, few people have said the same thing and that is "being surprised that someone decided to learn their small language". I do it, because by learning a language, I also learn a culture, which is really valuable for me. And believe me, there are many interesting things hidden in Slavic languages, which makes them more appealing in general.
2:28 That's one of my main reasons for wanting to learn languages, studying Spanish and Russian right now. Being able to talk to the people in a country you move to or visiting unlocks so much more opportunities than not being able to talk to them at all. When it comes to "minority" languages, I already speak Swedish fluently. Want to learn Korean, Finnish, Turkish and Estonian at some point.
Turkish and Korean rare? lol but yea i found some rare languages surprisingly useful i think the rarest language i tried to learn was either Irish or Faroese they have under 100k speakers but nobody knows how many people really speak Irish these days some say its a lot more there is some content in these languages but not much there was a moment recently where i was reading a Wikipedia article but the English version was too short to i went through all the languages they where all pretty short apart from one but the language was not something common but it was Basque a language with only around 600k speakers. Also about resources you said there are resources for all languages in English but that is not really true for some rarer languages like with Basque i had to use Spanish resources because there where not enough in English and i would also like to add that some very rare languages have a lot more resources than other languages languages spoken in richer countries like Irish have more resources than languages spoken in poor countries but with more speakers like Guajarati. Sometimes a language can have a lot of speakers but feels rare because a lot of those people don't use the internet or because they have a culture where they don't use the language much outside like i really noticed with Tagalog they have a big population but they just speak English online.
I live in Atlantic Canada, and let me tell you: between Newfies and Québecois french, everyone has some sort accent (not to mention, we all speak very quickly) so nobody minds if you have a foreign accent at all! i was really shocked to realize how negative the language learning community could be when I started learning a more "standard" French. I'm learning a few rare languages (Romanian, Gaelige, and two dead languages) and it seems that native speakers are so appreciative and helpful, and I enjoy learning about cultures that maybe don't get as might spotlight. 😊
I was really interested in your comments about the contrasting feedback you get from native speakers. I'm learning two rare languages - Irish and Welsh - and in my experience there's a real contrast between the two in the way native speakers react to learners. If you use Irish language resources online, you can find a lot of help and encouragement, but it won't be long before you also notice a persistent sniping at learners from some native speakers. Even learners who are themselves Irish, and have learned the language to an advanced level, will be criticized because they nevertheless learned it as a second language and don't speak it like it used to sound in some rural Irish-speaking community in the 1950's. Or Irish people who grew up as native Irish speakers but grew up in the 'wrong' part of Ireland, especially in the east of the country, will hear about how they're not really speaking Irish and might as well just speak English. There's even a tongue-in-cheek word in Ireland for native Irish speakers who do this: they're called Gaeil-bores (it's a play on words. In Irish, a Gaeilgeoir - pronounced Gwale-gore - is someone who speaks Irish; so a Gaeilgeoir is someone who speaks Irish, and a Gaeil-bore is someone who speaks Irish and can't wait to tell someone else they're doing it wrong). My experience of learning Welsh has been completely different. Native speakers seem glad to welcome learners. There's a big emphasis on using your Welsh - no matter how little you might have - without letting your fear of making mistakes hold you back. I'm not sure what accounts for the difference. Ireland and Wales are close neighbors, with some commonalities in their history (including deliberate suppression of the native language by a larger and more powerful neighbor), with related languages that are minority languages in their own countries, and with governments and various private initiatives all ostensibly committed to encouraging use of the native language. But the experience of learning them is quite different. I don't know where the idea arose that learning Irish has to have a punitive element to it, but at some point you have to stop trying to make sense of it and just carry on learning regardless.
Hi, I'm also fluent in Korean and learning Turkish now. Many people said that Korean and Turkish have grammatical similarities, so Korean is easy/not difficult. But for me, knowing Korean doesn't help me to learn Turkish easily😅 Because I feel like grammatically, Turkish is more difficult and more complicated than Korean although they're similar 😅 But... it's still interesting to learn it! 😎
2:22 Unless the person insists on speaking English to you either way, once you do the tiniest mistake, making your effort on learning a language useless. So why do we even learn some language, when vast majority of people speak English anyway and will reply to you in English, no matter what language you choose? That makes me angry sometimes honestly, but thank God it happens mostly on the Internet and not in real-life...
In terms of speakers, you're right.👍 I meant it more like ease of access. If it weren't for the internet, local Korean classes are hard to access, tutors are not so common, and there is not much casual Korean content for normies like Dora the Explorer or Ni Hao Kai Lan. The internet has really changed this in the US
I love and hate learning Dangme. It's like so cool to learn such a rare language but OMG there just is NOOOOO resources. Ok exaggeration, there are a few, but you still have to mainly rely on just interviewing the natives. And natives are sometimes really not that helpful when it comes to explaining why something is said certain way. I could kill for a tained teacher and a text book.
Probs to you. Whenever I research methods for language learning the come up with their own course which only exists for Spanish, English, German, French and maybe a few more. I study Burmese. So gotta say there are books and courses but nothing fancy and definitely not the most effective ones. Finding comprehensible input is haaard. How are you doing now with your language learning?
I don't think Korean and Turkish are rare.
In Indonesia, many of the youth generations love Korean & Turkish pop culture, and the both languages are getting popular by years.
I’m really happy that in the last 10-15 years it seems like there are more materials available for languages like Vietnamese, Thai, and Turkish that have a sizable number of speakers but attract relatively few learners outside of their immediate region. When I first took a stab at Vietnamese around 2005-2008 I really suffered from a lack of quality resources but in 2014 I started again and there started to be more resources available. Cantonese is another that I have had some trouble with resources, but that’s gotten a little better as well. While I don’t think I’ve ever met another serious learner of these languages IRL, the cost of offering materials on these languages has gone down somewhat, which is good for those few of us who are really serious about it. I think studying these midsized languages might be the best because there are a lot of speakers and a sizeable amount of content, but little competition from other learners and a lot of free or low cost native content. Languages that are a lot rarer I probably wouldn’t learn unless I had a personal connection or I lived there. Recently I’ve been doing a lot of work on Spanish and it’s a totally different experience. While I am motivated and it’s a great change of pace, I understand what you’re saying about trying to be different.
Great channel ! I am learning Icelandic and so far all the Icelanders I talked to (but one) have been delighted when I started speaking, even at the beginning. Sometimes I feel it's like speaking a secret language. I was having lunch with some Icelandic friends in the summer of 2021 and after a few passages, the waitress couldn't resist asking what language we were speaking. I enjoyed it!
I love your channel, I am learning Turkish too, it's such a fun language after you get past the "hard" phase... I have now begun korean - wow I will be taking a looong time with it, it's very interesting but tough! Makes turkish seem easy, but strangely turkish does help with korean cause grammatically similarities, the fun of stacking languages 😉
Once you internalize vowel harmony and affixes to the point of being second nature, you can finally start accumulating vocab 😂
Also, it's funny you say that because I did Korean first and then Turkish, and I thought Korean was easier than Turkish because there's less transformations.
@@studywithalex Really?! You thought Korean was easier than Turkish?? That gives me lots of hope then! My Turkish is pretty comfortable now as I have made it to the vocab acquisition phase... but I am very new at Korean and I am finding just the sounds of it so hard, and still getting used to script as well - I wonder if I will ever learn it! The fact that you thought it easier than Turkish gives me hope then!!! :) I hope after this overwhelming phase of getting used to so many new exotic sounds I will settle in and start enjoying it (fingers crossed!)... after getting these two languages better I was hoping to maybe start Japanese in 2024 - as you also know Japanese, do you think Korean helps much with Japanese? I know of course it doesn't help with all the Kanji characters, but does it help otherwise? I have heard many conflicting views on this, would love your opinion, Alex, cheers :))
I am going to be learning Latin in the Year 2024. I will have a much easier time with Latin because I am learning Portuguese currently. To me learning rare languages is a valuable skill to pursue, just like sports memorabilia, rare coins, rare art has monetary value.👊💕💥
I'm learning an uncommon language but I'm not 🚫 telling you about it. Don't want everyone to copy and then I won't be special 🤣
I am a Slavic linguist and once I visited Slovenia for the first time, few people have said the same thing and that is "being surprised that someone decided to learn their small language".
I do it, because by learning a language, I also learn a culture, which is really valuable for me. And believe me, there are many interesting things hidden in Slavic languages, which makes them more appealing in general.
2:28 That's one of my main reasons for wanting to learn languages, studying Spanish and Russian right now. Being able to talk to the people in a country you move to or visiting unlocks so much more opportunities than not being able to talk to them at all.
When it comes to "minority" languages, I already speak Swedish fluently. Want to learn Korean, Finnish, Turkish and Estonian at some point.
Turkish and Korean rare? lol but yea i found some rare languages surprisingly useful i think the rarest language i tried to learn was either Irish or Faroese they have under 100k speakers but nobody knows how many people really speak Irish these days some say its a lot more there is some content in these languages but not much there was a moment recently where i was reading a Wikipedia article but the English version was too short to i went through all the languages they where all pretty short apart from one but the language was not something common but it was Basque a language with only around 600k speakers.
Also about resources you said there are resources for all languages in English but that is not really true for some rarer languages like with Basque i had to use Spanish resources because there where not enough in English and i would also like to add that some very rare languages have a lot more resources than other languages languages spoken in richer countries like Irish have more resources than languages spoken in poor countries but with more speakers like Guajarati.
Sometimes a language can have a lot of speakers but feels rare because a lot of those people don't use the internet or because they have a culture where they don't use the language much outside like i really noticed with Tagalog they have a big population but they just speak English online.
I live in Atlantic Canada, and let me tell you: between Newfies and Québecois french, everyone has some sort accent (not to mention, we all speak very quickly) so nobody minds if you have a foreign accent at all! i was really shocked to realize how negative the language learning community could be when I started learning a more "standard" French. I'm learning a few rare languages (Romanian, Gaelige, and two dead languages) and it seems that native speakers are so appreciative and helpful, and I enjoy learning about cultures that maybe don't get as might spotlight. 😊
I was really interested in your comments about the contrasting feedback you get from native speakers. I'm learning two rare languages - Irish and Welsh - and in my experience there's a real contrast between the two in the way native speakers react to learners.
If you use Irish language resources online, you can find a lot of help and encouragement, but it won't be long before you also notice a persistent sniping at learners from some native speakers. Even learners who are themselves Irish, and have learned the language to an advanced level, will be criticized because they nevertheless learned it as a second language and don't speak it like it used to sound in some rural Irish-speaking community in the 1950's. Or Irish people who grew up as native Irish speakers but grew up in the 'wrong' part of Ireland, especially in the east of the country, will hear about how they're not really speaking Irish and might as well just speak English. There's even a tongue-in-cheek word in Ireland for native Irish speakers who do this: they're called Gaeil-bores (it's a play on words. In Irish, a Gaeilgeoir - pronounced Gwale-gore - is someone who speaks Irish; so a Gaeilgeoir is someone who speaks Irish, and a Gaeil-bore is someone who speaks Irish and can't wait to tell someone else they're doing it wrong).
My experience of learning Welsh has been completely different. Native speakers seem glad to welcome learners. There's a big emphasis on using your Welsh - no matter how little you might have - without letting your fear of making mistakes hold you back.
I'm not sure what accounts for the difference. Ireland and Wales are close neighbors, with some commonalities in their history (including deliberate suppression of the native language by a larger and more powerful neighbor), with related languages that are minority languages in their own countries, and with governments and various private initiatives all ostensibly committed to encouraging use of the native language. But the experience of learning them is quite different. I don't know where the idea arose that learning Irish has to have a punitive element to it, but at some point you have to stop trying to make sense of it and just carry on learning regardless.
That's a really interesting observation. I wonder what is making some cultures respond like that. 🤔
Thanks for making this video cuz im currently debating whether or not to learn a few rare ones to an A2 or B1 level
Hi, I'm also fluent in Korean and learning Turkish now. Many people said that Korean and Turkish have grammatical similarities, so Korean is easy/not difficult. But for me, knowing Korean doesn't help me to learn Turkish easily😅 Because I feel like grammatically, Turkish is more difficult and more complicated than Korean although they're similar 😅 But... it's still interesting to learn it! 😎
These are not rare languages man. Neither minority
2:22 Unless the person insists on speaking English to you either way, once you do the tiniest mistake, making your effort on learning a language useless.
So why do we even learn some language, when vast majority of people speak English anyway and will reply to you in English, no matter what language you choose?
That makes me angry sometimes honestly, but thank God it happens mostly on the Internet and not in real-life...
Jajajajaj se ponían re hincha pelotas por como hablas el español xD
Nice video 👍
But I don't think Korean and Turkish are rare languages... Especially Korean.
In terms of speakers, you're right.👍 I meant it more like ease of access. If it weren't for the internet, local Korean classes are hard to access, tutors are not so common, and there is not much casual Korean content for normies like Dora the Explorer or Ni Hao Kai Lan. The internet has really changed this in the US
@@studywithalex Oh, I see
I love and hate learning Dangme. It's like so cool to learn such a rare language but OMG there just is NOOOOO resources. Ok exaggeration, there are a few, but you still have to mainly rely on just interviewing the natives. And natives are sometimes really not that helpful when it comes to explaining why something is said certain way. I could kill for a tained teacher and a text book.
Probs to you. Whenever I research methods for language learning the come up with their own course which only exists for Spanish, English, German, French and maybe a few more.
I study Burmese. So gotta say there are books and courses but nothing fancy and definitely not the most effective ones. Finding comprehensible input is haaard.
How are you doing now with your language learning?