phd

It is a common assumption about world languages that there are some languages with a rich culture and with a long linguistic tradition (e.g., most of European languages). It is important and even prestigious to speak as many of these languages as possible in order to be able to interact easily with each other.

But I think almost everyone of us lives near of small peoples having their own culture and speaking "absolutly incomprehensible" languages. These languages commonly do not have an official status of any country. For instance, users from Spain, I think, can confirm my words.

What if we wrote here about languages that we do not speak (or maybe even we do!) and that are not official languages of any country but we sometimes face them!

Here comes my own experience.

So, the languages I have ever met:

- Balkar (<Turkic, Altaic), ~85,000 native speakers in Russia (I've was in a linguistic expedition and have made a grammar research)
- Cherkes (<North Caucasian), ~46,000 native speakers in Russia (the same)
- Nenets (<Uralic), ~25,000 native speakers at all; or maybe even less (the same).
- Bashkir (<Turkic, Altaic), ~900,000 native speakers in Russia. In my childhood I lived somewhere in Ural (at the border between the Europe and the Asia ) and I have often heard the amazing Bashkir speech.

Feedback wellcome!

pluiepoco

WE Chinese have a saying that "a language belongs to a nation", so a small group of people speak one language, that language should be small and less influential, in contrary, if a greater people or nation speaks one language, then the latter language should be bigger than the first one.

Because human beings are different, and we have different nations and kinds, so when the same kinds of people live together, they speak the same language, their mother tongue to communicate, and some groups even wanted to isolate from other linguistic communities, though it's normal phenomenon!

Your quoted languages are those which own a relatively small number of native speakers, or it belongs to a smaller "race" (it's forbidden word here, but I have to use here in a sociological neccesity), and they have to integrate with larger surrounding languages and try to retard his own, so if they live in Russia, they speak universally Russian, but they use their own languages in their own communities. It's not hard to understand.

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刘晓雨 pluiepoco
Home of Asia, 中国语言论坛(Chinese Forum of Languages), 西瓜村

phd

Well I did not contend at all that it is hard to understand. What is important is exactly what you're saying: there are "influential" languages and "small" languages. It is easy to be influential, and what is amazing is the ability of small cultures and languages to survive.

Moreover, the situation is not so easy, it seems. For instance, Northern languages in Russia (Nenets, e.g.) are gradually dying out (and some of them have already safely dead) while in the Caucasus peoples perfectly preserve their languages from Russian. I've seen myself Cherkes children living in Russia and learning Russian as the second language at the age of 5-6 from TV propgrams!

I think it is an interesting topic, and many of us could share some experience in the field and learn much interesting stuff about small peoples and languages from each other!

Joe Gold

I could have given you a nice example of small of a small language in Switzerland with Rumanch (about 60 000 native speakers). Only, it got the status of official, national language about 10 years ago, if I remember well. (It is the fourth official language. And in purpose, not to choose one of the four existing dialects as the standard, they just created a fifth one, nobody actually speakes, but all off them understand.)

phd

Switzerland seems to be one of the most special european countries with respect to linguistic situation: I think, in Switzerland the number of official languages per head is the highest in Europe.

I wonder, can Rumanch be expected to be the "smallest" language in Europe? 60 000 is such a small number! Or maybe some Celtic langauges can appear to have even smaller numbers of native speaker...

Don't you know in what cantons exactly Rumanch is spoken?

Joe Gold

I was maybe a little harsh with 60'000, it might be more around 70'000. Anyway, it accounts for about 1% of Switzerland's population. It is actually spoken mainly in Graubünden, that is at the real east of Switzerland, next to Austria.
And I was also wrong on the English spelling of the language. It should actually be Romansh. (For the number of times you might see it written. It is seldomly written.)

pluiepoco

Can you tell me what's the proposed fifth language in Switzerland, the Interlingua or Latino sone flexion, or any other?

Maybe you swiss will finally create a universal European language, who knows!

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刘晓雨 pluiepoco
Home of Asia, 中国语言论坛(Chinese Forum of Languages), 西瓜村