There are currently around 6500 languages spoken in the world. Naturally, some of these are going to be strange, odd and weird. This got me thinking, which are the weirdest languages currently spoken?
Sadly, many of these languages are endangered languages, with many having only a handful of speakers. With that being said, there are a few languages which are flourishing in the modern 21st Century world.
15. Adyghe
Chances are that you have never heard of the Adyghe people, nor have you ever heard of their language before today. However, their language is one of the strangest you will likely ever come across!
Looking on a map, the Adyghe people reside in South Russia and North Turkey. So surely the language shares some similarities to either Russian or Turkish? Nope!
The language actually sounds more like Arabic than Turkish or Russian, but has absolutely no relation to it whatsoever! On top of this, the language is rarely written down, with different generations having been taught different things, making it rather complicated.
As if this wasn’t bad enough, the spoken language also has what can only be described as hissing and rasping. In all honesty, it is difficult to even explain, without you having first listened to the language being spoken…
14. Sentinelese
Sentinelese is one of the great mysteries of languages, because we know absolutely nothing about it. The language is spoken by the Sentinelese people on North Sentinel Island.
For centuries, the West have tried to make contact with these groups, using both ships and aircraft to do so. However, regardless of the medium, the natives have repelled visitors, often using lethal force.
As such, there are several laws banning you from visiting the island and interacting with the natives. This includes researchers and polyglots, meaning that there is no way we will learn about the language any time soon!
Due to this, the language is one of the weirdest languages in the world (and also one of the most intriguing!) The fact that probably for the entirety of our lifetimes, the language will be an enigma!
13. Pitjantjatjara
Don’t even ask me how you pronounce that. (Apparently it’s pronounced as Pit-jan-jah-jarra.)
Pitjantjatjara is an Australian Aboriginal dialect that is certainly one of the weirdest languages. Surprisingly, Pitjantjatjara is much like other aboriginal languages in terms of its vocabulary and pronunciation.
When it comes to the written language, however, it is much stranger. As with other aboriginal languages, the language is written in the Latin script as with most other languages.
However, the language doesn’t use apostrophes or accents to show where you should emphasize words, letters or syllables. Instead, it uses colons (:) on vowels and underlines (_) consonants.
To an outsider, or someone with only a minor knowledge of the language, it certainly looks strange. Many have commented that it looks as though a small child has taken the computer and got a little trigger happy…
12. Anglo-Saxon
Chances are, the vast majority of you reading this are native English speakers. In History class, we were taught that the Anglo-Saxons were the people who inhabited England before the Norman conquest in 1066.
Anglo-Saxon was their native language, spoken by almost everyone. Combined with Norman French, Anglo-Saxon serves as the basis for Modern English that we use today (regardless of dialect).
It is because of this, that Anglo-Saxon is one of the weirdest languages. Most Modern English speakers can see many words we use today in the language, but also many antiquated words that haven’t be used for centuries.
On top of this, the grammar of the language is rather German (as it was a Germanic language), but also has hints of Modern English. This makes the language feel familiar, yet oddly strange when looking at it.
11. Tuyuca
Tuyuca is certainly one of the most obscure languages in the world. Nevertheless, Tuyuca is one of the weirdest languages to have ever been spoken in the world.
If you’ve ever spent time learning German or French, you’ve probably come across its numerous genders for words, that seem to have no rhyme or reason for being there.
French has three genders (masculine, feminine and plural) whilst German has four (masculine, feminine, neuter and plural. Tuyuca on the other hand, has well over 100!
On top of this, negative forms of the verbs (I don’t understand, I won’t go) go on the end of the verb. When you build up long, complex sentences, it can be hard to keep up and tell who does or doesn’t understand what’s going on.
10. Basque
When we think of the languages of Spain, we probably just think of Spanish, or maybe Catalan due to the recent independence votes. However, Basque is there too, known for being one of only a few language isolates.
Due to being a language isolate, and despite being close to so many different romance languages, Basque vocabulary has only taken a few Romance language words, remaining purer than most other languages.
This makes reading, speaking and listening rather difficult, especially for beginners.
On top of this, Basque grammar is slightly odd. German students often complain that after certain “trigger” words, the verb must go to the end of the sentence, in Basque, this is standard.
As if this wasn’t bad enough, there are almost no English-language Basque learning resources. This means that learning the language has an extra layer of difficulty as you have to learn it through another language.
9. Silbo Gomero
As with Basque, Silbo Gomero is similarly a regional language in Spain that most people tend to forget. However, it is completely different from Basque, but is still one of the weirdest languages I’ve ever come across!
The language is spoken on the island of Gomero in the Canary Islands. But, what makes it weird is the fact that it isn’t spoken in the same way that all other languages are spoken, it’s whistled instead.
Depending on the tone and pitch of the whistle depends on what the words means, making it rather hard for a new learner to grasp. However, the language can be heard up to five kilometers (eight miles) away!
Sadly, due to a number of factors, including many that are helping to kill Spain’s other regional languages, Silbo Gomero is dying out. Many have placed this one the fact that the language is so strange and is rather isolated.
8. Xhosa
Xhosa is famous for being of South Africa’s eleven national languages, as well as a national language of Zimbabwe. The language also serves as the national language of the Xhosa people.
On the surface of it, there isn’t too much different between Xhosa and any other African Bantu language. However, when you listen to language being spoken, that’s when you find something rather strange…
Bantu languages are known for their consonant clicking, something that is present in most of their languages. However, Xhosa has it on roughly 10% of their words, which makes it rather odd to listen to!
And yes, it is grammatically possible to have a sentence that has nothing other than consonant clicking. This is even stranger and makes the entire language as a whole sound more like an alien language than anything else.
7. Arabic
Arabic is known for many things, primarily being the official language of Islam and Muslims the world over. Due to this, Arabic is also one of the world’s oldest languages.
Arabic is one of only a handful of modern languages that still writes right to left, rather than left to right. This, combined with the accents and rather odd lettering, makes reading extremely difficult for beginners.
Then there’s also the fact that because the language is so commonly spoken, there are hundreds of different dialects. In reality, these dialects shouldn’t be called dialects, they should be called other languages!
Just because you speak Moroccan Arabic, don’t think that you’ll be able to understand Levantine Arabic, or Jordanian Arabic, or even Algerian. They are literally completely different languages!
6. Esperanto
On the contrary to Arabic, Esperanto is one of the newest languages to have come into existence. The language was first used in 1887 by Polish writer and polyglot L. L. Zamenhof.
And when we say “used” we actually mean “invented”. Yes, L. L. Zamenhof invented his own language! How cool! Zamenhof wanted to create a lingua franca that wasn’t the language of a European colonial power.
However, he understood that if he made it up to be what seemed like complete gibberish, no one would want to learn, and he would’ve wasted his time. He would’ve likely faced persecution for it too.
As such, he combined several major European languages, including English, Polish, French, German and Spanish (among others), into one language: Esperanto. And this is what makes it so strange!
It has Germanic, Romance and Slavic undertones, which makes it one of the coolest languages to learn! (And one of the best to listen to!)
5. Taa
Taa, otherwise known as !Xóõ, is very similar, yet rather different from Xhosa, however, both remain among the weirdest languages ever spoken!
As with Xhosa, Taa is a consonant clicking language. As with Xhosa, it heavily relies on the consonant clicking in order to get the meaning of various words across. In total, the language has 160 different phenoms.
As if that wasn’t strange enough already, the clicks themselves are different, something that isn’t really present in Xhosa. You can have different tones of clicks, including: mid-falling, high, medium and low. These all mean different things too.
Due to this, the language is considered one of the hardest languages to learn, as most foreigners, regardless of the language(s) they already speak, struggle to pronounce many of the words, and the various types of clicks.
4. Mandarin
Mandarin is currently the world’s most spoken language, being spoken by well over a billion people! However, most people seem to struggle when learning Mandarin, mostly because it is one of the weirdest languages ever!
Mandarin is one of several languages spoken in China, with it being the official language of the Chinese Communist Party, and therefore the rest of China as a whole.
What makes it one of the oddest languages is the fact that it has no alphabet. This means that every character you see, is its own independent word, making it almost impossible to read without knowing the words beforehand!
On top of this, Mandarin is a tonal language, this means that several of the words are the same, it’s just how you pronounce them that gives you an indication as to what you’re talking about! How strange!
3. Mixtec
Chances are that you have never heard of the Mixtec language before today. Chances are you couldn’t even guess (roughly) where it is spoken. If you are familiar with the language then you probably know it’s spoken in Oaxaca, Mexico.
Mixtec, otherwise known as Chalcatongo Mixtec, is one of the weirdest languages ever. This is because its grammar is rather basic, just not in a good way…
Mixtec is incapable of forming basic yes or no questions. For instance, asking “Would you like to go to the park?” would be the exact same as “You would like to go to the park”.
For the people who have grown up speaking the language, this isn’t a strange concept, they just have other ways around it. However, for people unfamiliar with the language this is incredibly strange!
2. Archi
When it comes to the world’s strangest languages, Archi is usually somewhere near the top. And this is for a good reason, or more accurately, several good reasons.
Perhaps the most famous reason why people have heard about Archi is the fact that it has so many verb conjugations. In English, we have three (example verb, “make”): I make, he/she makes, they make.
You can also change the tense, eg. I made, he/she would have made, they will be making. You’re probably thinking that Archi maybe has ten or so. No, it has over 1.5 million!
That’s right, one single verb can have a potential of 1.5 different endings based on who says it, who is doing the verb and the tense. To put that in perspective, some languages don’t have 1.5 million words!
1. English
I know. I know. How can English be one of the weirdest languages in the world when it is one of the most spoken languages in the world, spoken by billions of people?
Well, English grammar, in particular it’s spelling, is extremely strange to most foreigners. English is one of only a few languages to use an almost excessive amount of silent letters, used in a surprisingly large number of words.
On top of that, we have several different ways to spell things. For example, the word “tough” is pronounced more like “tuff”, similar to how the word “stuff” is pronounced. And this isn’t an cherry-picked example.
There are also hundreds of dialects of English, each with their own take on the language. The two most famous are British and American English, with both being the same language, but having vastly different spellings and vocabulary!
Which are the weirdest languages in your opinion? Tell me in the comments!