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4 Challenging Foreign Languages You Never Thought of Learning (And How to Tough It Out)
by Ryan O'Rourke on Saturday, October 26, 2013
TAGS: Language Learning
When rolling French off the tongue becomes passé and German no longer causes Fremdsprachenbildungsangst, it might be high time to up your foreign language learning game.
This time easy foreign languages won't do. Without much effort, the thought of singing the tones of Chinese, mastering Japanese kanji or gracing your notebook with Arabic calligraphy pops into your head.
But you want something more obscure, a challenge that will both baffle your friends and mould your brain into a tour de force of foreign language learning genius.
At a loss? Here are a few lesser-known foreign languages that will push your tongue to its limits (and provide a little excitement along the way):
Tbilisi
Georgian
With a deceivingly Anglo-Saxon-esque name, Georgian sounds more like an American English dialect spoken in Atlanta than a mystic ancient language from the Caucasus.
If only that were true, Georgian language learners could breathe an anticipatory sigh of relief from the pain of the bewildering linguistic journey they are about embark upon.
Why Is Georgian So Difficult?
Occupying a branch in the undeniably cool-sounding—but abstruse—Kartvelian language family, Georgian is not related in the least to any foreign languages popular among learners, despite being surrounded by countries speaking Turkic and Indo-European tongues. Literally, almost every ounce of foreign vocabulary you've ever picked up in the past is useless for learning Georgian.
As if the daunting task of perfecting unfamiliar foreign vocabulary weren't enough, the modern Georgian alphabet, Mkhedruli, is also completely unique to the language. At first, reading Georgian is about as easy as deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, but once you've memorized the letters and their associated sounds, the Georgian language shines even where modern languages like English and French fail with its highly-phonetic script.
For all but the nerdiest of grammar geeks, the notoriously arcane Georgian grammar is as fraught with difficulty as keeping Lindsey Lohan sober at a Christmas party. Learning Georgian involves coming to terms with nasty polysyllabic words like agglutination, polypersonalism, and postpositions.
Svaneti - Ushguli
How To Learn Georgian
Fortunately, it's not all doom and gloom for Georgian learners.
Georgian gives us a bit of a break with its lack of grammatical genders, missing definite and indefinite articles, and dropped subjects, avoiding the complexities that even learners of common foreign languages like German or French can't enjoy.
To learn Georgian without a fuss, start off mastering the Georgian alphabet and wrapping your tongue around the sounds of the language with a good self-study beginner's course or Internet site. Finding good English-language Georgian learning materials can sometimes be a challenge, but here are few to get you started:
Beginner's Georgian: For English-speakers, there's no better introduction to the Georgian language than this course from Hippocrene. Packaged with two audio CDs, Beginner's Georgian can't be beat for teaching proper Georgian pronunciation and learning conversational Georgian.
Georgian Dictionary and Phrasebook: The only Georgian/English bilingual dictionary for beginner's that's available for a reasonable price. This updated edition now includes Georgian script, making it far more useful for both learners and travellers.
Georgian: A Reading Grammar: If you're losing sleep over Georgian grammar, the detailed explanations in this massive volume could be the calming sedative you need for learning to read and write Georgian. Although a little heavy on linguistic terminology, there's no better resource for decoding Georgian grammar out there.
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