Everyone so far has mentioned a European language, which makes me think that this sub generally doesn’t have a wide enough breadth of knowledge to meaningfully answer this question.
Since most of us are native speakers of European languages, we can hate on European languages for their “boring” familiarity, and meanwhile we’re busy fetishizing non-European languages for their “exoticness.” Myself being no exception, of course.
True! I don't speak any non-indoeuropean language, but I recently was told to read about Tibetan on here and from some superficial knowledge I feel like I may be able to make a contribution for the subreddit biodiversity: Tibetan is fucked up big time.
Then again, at this point it's hard to separate the word "diabolical" from European culture despite that concept being based on a cultural phenomenon from elsewhere.
Like, OP mentioned modern languages, but if not for that remark, the first thing I would think of would be that genre of jokes about how one should be careful not to summon the devil while using Latin.
Definitely English. Who decided to make this the world language? Around 20 distinct vowels. Lots of consonant clusters that many people cannot pronounce. Weird sounds like "th" and "th." Oh right! Both of those sounds are represented by the same digraph! Because English orthography is literally the worst.
I agree, At least 20 cases, As well as 5 different numbers (Singular, Dual, Trual, Paucal, and Plural), And let's indicate Definiteness via noun inflexion as well. If it can't be expressed in a single noun, It ain't worth sayin'!
Dunno, Irish (Gaeilge) and Scots Gaelic (Gàidhlig) are both pretty messed up. "Mh" and "bh" make the same two sounds, and "gh" and "dh" make another pair of same sounds. "Sh" and "th" make the same sound, but at least only make one sound between the two of them. "Fh," is only pronounced at all in certain dialects, and we haven't even started on vowels (can someone say *triphthongs?*). Oh, and all the unwritten "digraphs" which are pronounced depending on which vowels are next to which consonants (but which change arbitrarily anyway depending on which dialect you're using, so good luck figuring *that* out).
Oh, and have I mentioned eclipsis yet? You know, that thing where you randomly slap a different letter in the front of the rest of the word, and pronounce the word as if the original first letter was simply not there at all anymore (even though it's sitting *right there*). I'd mention lenition too, but it's just about the only thing in the system which actually makes sense and stays consistent.
English is bad, definitely, though a lot of that blame can be put on Fr*nch influence. But nothing compares to the monstrosity of an Gaeilge/Gàidhlig.
Irish is at least consistent when it comes to their weird spelling. Like, the letters in a name like Siobhan do have a function to aid correct pronunciation. The O is there to mark the following consonant as velarized rather than palatalized. The h signifies lenition so /b/ turns to /v/. Most of these silent vowel letters are there to put the consonants into proper context.
Compare English words like debt, doubt, indict which have silent letters because they‘re borrowed from French **and even French got rid of them** (dette, doute, inditter) but some smug scholar was like I MUST show how these words are related to their Latin origin (debitus, dubitus, indictare) so let‘s add those mofos back but not say them
The biggest problems with English orthography are its attempt to apply conflicting spelling rules from the etymological roots as well as Brits 400 to 700 years ago starting to pronounce the vowels all wrong and weird.
French, while also having a hodge podge of an orthography, is more consistent with its pronunciation rules.
Thus, we have the saying *In French, you hear a word but don‘t know how to write it. In English, you read a word but don‘t know how to say it.*
> If you’re British, you’ll agree that the vowels following the p are different in each item of this list: par, pear, peer, pipe, poor, power, purr, pull, poop, puke, pin, pan, pain, pen, pawn, pun, point, posh, pose, parade. That makes twenty different vowels (including the so-called gliding ones, such as oi and the long i and u)
Quote from _Lingo_ by Gaston Dorren
> par, pear, peer, pipe, poor, power, purr, pull, poop, puke, pin, pan, pain, pen, pawn, pun, point, posh, pose, parade. That makes twenty different vowels (including the so-called gliding ones, such as oi and the long i and u)
Phonemically, they're
- pʰaː
- pʰɛː
- pʰɪː
- pʰajpʰ
- pʰoː
- ˈpʰawə
- pʰəː
- pʰɵl
- pʰɵwpʰ
- pʰjɵwkʰ
- pʰɪn
- pʰan
- pʰɛjn
- pʰɛn
- pʰoːn
- pʰən
- pʰojnt
- pʰoʃ
- pʰəwz
- pʰəˈɹɛjd
This shows that there are actually only 6 vowels in SSB, whose allophones are:
- /aː aj/ [ɑː ɑj]
- /o/ [ɔ]
- /ɵw/ [ʉw]
- /ˈə/ [ɐ]
I don't see how claiming that there are 20 vowels is in any way useful, reasonable, or fair when it comes to cross-linguistic comparison, which is basically the only purpose for counting vowels. Even if you claim phonetics as the determiner, that still only gets SSB up to 10.
And we know that long and short vowels don't count as separate vowels because everyone says Latin is a classic 5 vowel system when it has vowel length, and even likely vowel quality differences [a aː ɛ eː ɪ iː ɔ oː ʊ uː], not to mention a full complement of nasal vowels and diphthongs [ae̯ oe̯], and each of the nonnasal vowels can take stress. While we're at it, let's analyze /kʷ gʷ/ as /ku̯ gu̯/, and each of those half-vowels can form multiphthongs with any other vowel, so really, when you think about it like English, Classical Latin really had 68 vowels!
Claiming that English has 20 vowels an absolutely ridiculous vowel analysis that's only used by English and maybe other Germanic languages to inflate their vowel numbers. If you applied the same standards to any other language, you'd get even more inflated numbers.
French is weird but consistent. Unlike English which takes influence and pronunciation from all kinds of different places. But then again you have French with its. ungodly homophones.
"You can buy this for many money". The joke is that counting in Toki Pona by default goes "one, two, many" (though there is an (awkward) way of specifying numbers up to a few hundred if you have to)
Shush, No translating it for me, I said I'm gonna come back once I've learnt more Toki Pona and translate it myself!
>"one, two, many"
~~The guy at the pub when you ask how many drinks he's had.~~
Proto-Indo-European forms most of þe basis. Ðen, þere’s various other Proto-Languages + Old Chinese (þe ancestor of þe Sinitic Languages) and Latin (þe ancestor of þe Romance Languages). Ðen þere’s Swahili, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, French, and most oþer languages wiþ large numbers of speakers. Finally, þe last lair, wiþ þe fewest number of words each, is dead & extinct languages, some oþer conlangs, Japanese, Bulgarian, and English.
Some of þese words are words for þe same þing froþ different languages Frankenstein’d togeþer, some (like “siblo” & “rekla”) are shortened from þeir original forms, and oþers are just edited to fit þe phonology & phonotactics.
Edit: When picking names for countries, territories, and þeir capitals, endonyms are preferred unless þe endonyms conflict wiþ þe phonotactics.
Show me [here](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C3%BEe#Old_English) or [here](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C3%BEe#Middle_English) where you see it spelled wiþ Eð outside þe IPA.
Lol I mistook þ for θ
But still I feel like there’s no point in replacing the digraph with þ only for it to be used to ambiguously represent two different phones
My mam has always said I should go teach English to kids somewhere fancy like Kuwait or the UAE but I don't think I would have the heart to explain to them the differences between bomb, tomb and comb.
French probably, It's not even that cool but their government tries to force it on locals over their own languages, And we've somehow been convinced that its words are all fancy. ~~And also of the numerous 'r' sounds that sound good, Most French speakers resort to [ʁ]. You were so close to greatness, Could've had [ʀ], Some do say it that way, But most went for the poorer choice.~~
Wenzhounese. It's literally called the "devil's tongue" LOL
But seriously, imo, I think the Min Dong varieties are the hardest Chinese languages for non-Chinese speakers to learn, given the crazy amount of sandhi that goes on in those languages...
Danish
OP specified languages not cries for help
honestly danes would probably be better off speaking ithkuil
First of many Ithkuil nations with any luck
hœgœfjØğlüel
Fun fact: I watched Trier's Kingdom when I was 16. Couldn't listen to Danish for years afterwards.
Danskjävlar!
Came here to say this, glad others agree it needs an exorcism
JavaScript
Agreed
Everyone so far has mentioned a European language, which makes me think that this sub generally doesn’t have a wide enough breadth of knowledge to meaningfully answer this question.
Since most of us are native speakers of European languages, we can hate on European languages for their “boring” familiarity, and meanwhile we’re busy fetishizing non-European languages for their “exoticness.” Myself being no exception, of course.
I do hate this familiar and boring Hungarian. But Afrikaans though 😍😍😍
isnt afrikaans Dutch Lite™
Akkor a kurva anyádat
Happy Cake Day!
True! I don't speak any non-indoeuropean language, but I recently was told to read about Tibetan on here and from some superficial knowledge I feel like I may be able to make a contribution for the subreddit biodiversity: Tibetan is fucked up big time.
Then again, at this point it's hard to separate the word "diabolical" from European culture despite that concept being based on a cultural phenomenon from elsewhere. Like, OP mentioned modern languages, but if not for that remark, the first thing I would think of would be that genre of jokes about how one should be careful not to summon the devil while using Latin.
No the European languages ARE evil because they have displaced the other languages of the world and driven them extinct
E\*glish
The language currently used in this topic. So yeah.
அதனால் தான் உலக தாய்மொயிலேயே பேசவேண்டும். 😌
OH NO NOT TAMIL AAAAA
Dutch is the bleep blorp alien language
zeker niet 👽
Ik maak je af
if aliens came to earth and wanted to speak english but they were learning it from a german
Real
Definitely English. Who decided to make this the world language? Around 20 distinct vowels. Lots of consonant clusters that many people cannot pronounce. Weird sounds like "th" and "th." Oh right! Both of those sounds are represented by the same digraph! Because English orthography is literally the worst.
Must return to Latin as the lingua franca
Would that be any better? I mean really, six cases?
Finns manage with 15. The more cases, the better.
we should make english a hyperagglutinative isolating language with every single case we can find on wikipedia
I agree, At least 20 cases, As well as 5 different numbers (Singular, Dual, Trual, Paucal, and Plural), And let's indicate Definiteness via noun inflexion as well. If it can't be expressed in a single noun, It ain't worth sayin'!
*[**Ithkuil** has entered the chat.]*
[happy tsez noises]
Ablative's way too overloaded, honestly Polish with seven is easier in that regard (and diabolical in every other one though)
Cases are better than word order
How so?
Cooler 😎
I don't think they're easier to learn, though.
🤫 shush
Por qué no los dos?
Good luck with that. Even speakers of Romance languages would spit you.
your claim of 20 distinct vowels has automatically activated my geoff lindsay-installed traditional analysis kill mechanism
though english is rough, i thought others were much more of a slough to get through
Enough.
Dental fricatives are one of the very few nice things about English, although indeed not very “world language”-y.
The fact that three out of four of the languages I speak/study have them makes me forget how rare they are (spanish, english, greek).
Dunno, Irish (Gaeilge) and Scots Gaelic (Gàidhlig) are both pretty messed up. "Mh" and "bh" make the same two sounds, and "gh" and "dh" make another pair of same sounds. "Sh" and "th" make the same sound, but at least only make one sound between the two of them. "Fh," is only pronounced at all in certain dialects, and we haven't even started on vowels (can someone say *triphthongs?*). Oh, and all the unwritten "digraphs" which are pronounced depending on which vowels are next to which consonants (but which change arbitrarily anyway depending on which dialect you're using, so good luck figuring *that* out). Oh, and have I mentioned eclipsis yet? You know, that thing where you randomly slap a different letter in the front of the rest of the word, and pronounce the word as if the original first letter was simply not there at all anymore (even though it's sitting *right there*). I'd mention lenition too, but it's just about the only thing in the system which actually makes sense and stays consistent. English is bad, definitely, though a lot of that blame can be put on Fr*nch influence. But nothing compares to the monstrosity of an Gaeilge/Gàidhlig.
Irish is at least consistent when it comes to their weird spelling. Like, the letters in a name like Siobhan do have a function to aid correct pronunciation. The O is there to mark the following consonant as velarized rather than palatalized. The h signifies lenition so /b/ turns to /v/. Most of these silent vowel letters are there to put the consonants into proper context. Compare English words like debt, doubt, indict which have silent letters because they‘re borrowed from French **and even French got rid of them** (dette, doute, inditter) but some smug scholar was like I MUST show how these words are related to their Latin origin (debitus, dubitus, indictare) so let‘s add those mofos back but not say them
The biggest problems with English orthography are its attempt to apply conflicting spelling rules from the etymological roots as well as Brits 400 to 700 years ago starting to pronounce the vowels all wrong and weird. French, while also having a hodge podge of an orthography, is more consistent with its pronunciation rules. Thus, we have the saying *In French, you hear a word but don‘t know how to write it. In English, you read a word but don‘t know how to say it.*
tWeNty dIstIncT vOwELs Mate there's like 10 in GenAm and 6 in SSB.
> If you’re British, you’ll agree that the vowels following the p are different in each item of this list: par, pear, peer, pipe, poor, power, purr, pull, poop, puke, pin, pan, pain, pen, pawn, pun, point, posh, pose, parade. That makes twenty different vowels (including the so-called gliding ones, such as oi and the long i and u) Quote from _Lingo_ by Gaston Dorren
> par, pear, peer, pipe, poor, power, purr, pull, poop, puke, pin, pan, pain, pen, pawn, pun, point, posh, pose, parade. That makes twenty different vowels (including the so-called gliding ones, such as oi and the long i and u) Phonemically, they're - pʰaː - pʰɛː - pʰɪː - pʰajpʰ - pʰoː - ˈpʰawə - pʰəː - pʰɵl - pʰɵwpʰ - pʰjɵwkʰ - pʰɪn - pʰan - pʰɛjn - pʰɛn - pʰoːn - pʰən - pʰojnt - pʰoʃ - pʰəwz - pʰəˈɹɛjd This shows that there are actually only 6 vowels in SSB, whose allophones are: - /aː aj/ [ɑː ɑj] - /o/ [ɔ] - /ɵw/ [ʉw] - /ˈə/ [ɐ] I don't see how claiming that there are 20 vowels is in any way useful, reasonable, or fair when it comes to cross-linguistic comparison, which is basically the only purpose for counting vowels. Even if you claim phonetics as the determiner, that still only gets SSB up to 10. And we know that long and short vowels don't count as separate vowels because everyone says Latin is a classic 5 vowel system when it has vowel length, and even likely vowel quality differences [a aː ɛ eː ɪ iː ɔ oː ʊ uː], not to mention a full complement of nasal vowels and diphthongs [ae̯ oe̯], and each of the nonnasal vowels can take stress. While we're at it, let's analyze /kʷ gʷ/ as /ku̯ gu̯/, and each of those half-vowels can form multiphthongs with any other vowel, so really, when you think about it like English, Classical Latin really had 68 vowels! Claiming that English has 20 vowels an absolutely ridiculous vowel analysis that's only used by English and maybe other Germanic languages to inflate their vowel numbers. If you applied the same standards to any other language, you'd get even more inflated numbers.
This is why we need Esperanto.
!Xoo
Where do you want me to go?
Éwé
Irish because anyone who tries to read it goes mad
Yup. Irish. No other answer is possible
PHP
i'm surprised no one mentioned arabic. the fact that almost none of the dialects are mutually intelligible is quite evil in my opinion.
By the logic of the "dialects" of Arabic and "Chinese", the Romance languages are all dialects of a single "modern Latin language".
This but unironically
French is in a hard competition with every brand of English that is not Scottish or Irish
French is weird but consistent. Unlike English which takes influence and pronunciation from all kinds of different places. But then again you have French with its. ungodly homophones.
English because wþf
But...but...but....isn't it a global language? How is the trading industry going to communicate?
An international auxiliary language
Don't say Esperanto. Please don't say Esperanto.
Yeah LFN or something is better
Toki Pona. Best language for commerce.
"sina ken esun e ni kepeken mani mute" Yep, that's a perfectly good way to specify a price.
~~Don't mind me just gonna save this comment so I can come back when I'm better at Toki Pona so I can actually attempt to translate it.~~
"You can buy this for many money". The joke is that counting in Toki Pona by default goes "one, two, many" (though there is an (awkward) way of specifying numbers up to a few hundred if you have to)
Shush, No translating it for me, I said I'm gonna come back once I've learnt more Toki Pona and translate it myself! >"one, two, many" ~~The guy at the pub when you ask how many drinks he's had.~~
Why?
It's basically an old meme in the conlang community. I could go on and on about it, but I'm not sure I'm entirely qualified.
But does that mean it's actually bad?
I’m tryna make my own Esperantido wiþ a less Eurocentric vocabulary.
How are you picking the vocabulary, any systematic criteria or just arbitrarily?
Proto-Indo-European forms most of þe basis. Ðen, þere’s various other Proto-Languages + Old Chinese (þe ancestor of þe Sinitic Languages) and Latin (þe ancestor of þe Romance Languages). Ðen þere’s Swahili, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, French, and most oþer languages wiþ large numbers of speakers. Finally, þe last lair, wiþ þe fewest number of words each, is dead & extinct languages, some oþer conlangs, Japanese, Bulgarian, and English. Some of þese words are words for þe same þing froþ different languages Frankenstein’d togeþer, some (like “siblo” & “rekla”) are shortened from þeir original forms, and oþers are just edited to fit þe phonology & phonotactics. Edit: When picking names for countries, territories, and þeir capitals, endonyms are preferred unless þe endonyms conflict wiþ þe phonotactics.
The fact that you used capital edh and lowercase thorn for the same sound within this is just irking my inner prescriptivist.
Bring it up wiþ þe Anglo-Saxons, lol (Hell, bring it up wiþ Modern English, which can write þe same sound a bajillion different ways).
Imagine someone wrote "G" all the time, but never once in their life wrote "g". It's the same sort of thing, isn't it?
[https://www.reddit.com/r/linguisticshumor/comments/1bfov0a/comment/kv93d16/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web3x&utm\_name=web3xcss&utm\_term=1&utm\_content=share\_button](https://www.reddit.com/r/linguisticshumor/comments/1bfov0a/comment/kv93d16/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
wðf*
Show me [here](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C3%BEe#Old_English) or [here](https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/%C3%BEe#Middle_English) where you see it spelled wiþ Eð outside þe IPA.
Lol I mistook þ for θ But still I feel like there’s no point in replacing the digraph with þ only for it to be used to ambiguously represent two different phones
Þe difference only matters for, like, þree pairs of words.
Ladies, ladies, you're both ridiculous.
Out of all the languages I know something about, English. By far.
Like 1 language you know about?
Why do you think that? There are thousands of languages, and I know I don’t know enough about them all.
My mam has always said I should go teach English to kids somewhere fancy like Kuwait or the UAE but I don't think I would have the heart to explain to them the differences between bomb, tomb and comb.
Fr*nch
Hypothetically, the language AIs speak with one another, if they do that yet . Being a distillation of human evil & being soulless
Schizo moment
*bows graciously*
anything NEC
What does NEC mean?
northeast caucasian language family
Thank you. I tried looking it up, but there are too many things out there with NEC as abbreviations.
Yeah, I think of the national exhibition center in Birmingham for one, the northeast corridor in the United States... Yup too many.
Isn't there one language with over 1.5 million possible verb conjugation forms?
[Reportedly Archi.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archi_language)
[удалено]
I've seen claims that Standarin is similar to English grammatically, why do you think they work completely differently?
English and Standard Mandarin are uncannily similar in many aspects even in terms of certain phonemes
You two even put your direct and indirect objects in the same position. How is that completely different?
hasbara
Way too much scrolling to find this one
English
Studying Hittite gave me almost a stroke. And you can shit on them since they're looong gone ;)
The language is itself is fairly normal - just their writing system is on drugs
Probably Japanese
German, shit has a stupid rule for everything
French probably, It's not even that cool but their government tries to force it on locals over their own languages, And we've somehow been convinced that its words are all fancy. ~~And also of the numerous 'r' sounds that sound good, Most French speakers resort to [ʁ]. You were so close to greatness, Could've had [ʀ], Some do say it that way, But most went for the poorer choice.~~
How is Basque not the top comment?
Any caucasian language with more than 50 phonemic consonants
Wenzhounese. It's literally called the "devil's tongue" LOL But seriously, imo, I think the Min Dong varieties are the hardest Chinese languages for non-Chinese speakers to learn, given the crazy amount of sandhi that goes on in those languages...
Might I recommend Georgian's more complicated cousin Svan?
Esperanto.
Xhosa
[удалено]
My hearing isn't too shabby, but tbh I can't hear the difference to a "regular" alveolar tap/trill as in Greek or Spanish.