I've always been keen to learn a regional/minority/endangered/less well known/less frequently studied language (perspective is everything, of course) properly but have only ever dabbled. The trouble is, I find it hard to focus as there are so many I'd like to study (and don't have a strong motivation for any one in particular).
11
vinnyd
Icelandic is frequently studied for its rich literary tradition
That's true, but most people who do that (me included) have studied Old Icelandic as a dead language, i.e. without any attempt at learning hearing, speaking, or writing, and OP ruled out that sort of thing. My first teacher was eccentric in having us use Modern Icelandic pronunciation.
Although people will tell you it hasn't changed much, Old Icelandic won't help you a great deal with a modern Icelandic newspaper, and even less with Halldor Laxness etc. The things people write about are just too different.
12
bjd
My first teacher was eccentric in having us use Modern Icelandic pronunciation.
Would anybody actually know how it differed from Old Icelandic?
I mention this because there are cultural differences in pronunciation of Latin (if I'm not wrong, the French don't pronounce it like the British do), but there is no way of knowing whose pronunciation is closest to what Latin speakers ~2000 years ago used.
13
soksabai
Without meaning to insult any one... and this doesnt qualify for the under I million mark.... as an anglo australian I have enjoyed learning Lithuatian and Khmer..
15
vinnyd
Would anybody actually know how it differed from Old Icelandic?
It depends on what you mean by "know". I think we know to a reasonable degree of certainty that Old Icelandic á (the accent indicates length) was pronounced somewhere in the ballpark of a continental European long a. That's why they wrote it that way. In Modern Icelandic it's an au diphthong. And I think we can be pretty sure that in OI, a double l was pronounced as two l's, not as tl as in Modern Icelandic. The missionaries who first wrote down Icelandic in Latin letters would presumably have used tl to represent a tl sound, not ll. (There is other evidence, mostly from comparative linguistics, but the spelling is the starting point.)
Do the French use the church Latin (Italianate) pronunciation? Chichero not Kickero? If so, I don't think they would claim that that reflects the way they believe it was pronounced in classical times.
16
alan1972
It seems that I am the first responder who can answer "yes" to the question as originally defined. Unfortunately my answer is not very interesting as zashibis has already correctly pointed out that many Irish people fall into this category. But for what it's worth the answers are:
what language did you pick up (no native speakers please)
Irish (Gaelic). I am Irish but as I spoke only English until school age I am not a native speaker.
why did you decide to learn it,
Because it was (and is) compulsory in Irish schools.
about how many people actually speak it?
In the 2002 Census in the Republic of Ireland, about 1.6m people claimed to be able to speak Irish. However about 1m of these people say they actually speak Irish less than once a week. The remaining 0.6m who speak it at least weekly presumably includes a lot of schoolchildren. These figures don't include Northern Ireland (or the rest of the world, of course).
The number of native speakers is hard to quantify, the census does not attempt to identify them. I've seen estimates ranging from 20,000 to 100,000.
17
bjd
Vinny, I just asked my source of information about French pronunciation of Latin. He said they learned to say "Sisero" for that old Roman, but some people may have said "Kikero". Certainly not the Italianate "Chichero".
We got a little stuck on Church Latin because we couldn't think of any mass words with a soft c in them.
Pro tip
Lonely Planet
trusted partner
trusted partner