Name Some Languages That Are the Least Like English?

[FalTorPan]

Aside from studying French for three years back in the Dark Ages -- i.e., the middle-school and high-school years -- I'm fluent in one language: English, American-style.

What languages would you consider to be the least like English? It's probably fair to rule out Spanish, German, French and Italian -- perhaps even Latin. Chinese seems like an obvious contender. What are some others?

I'm most interested in a short list of languages that have as little in common with each other -- as well as English -- as possible. Any takers?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Johnny Rico]

Staying in the European area, I'd say any Slovic language. Including anything from the Baltics, Scandinavia, and Russia.

Then for other regions of the world, Arabic, Farse (sp?), and numerous African tribal dialects. And like you said, any oriental language is very different than English.

What's funny that in my church, we have a priest from Nigeria. The official language of Nigeria is English, yet, it's somewhat difficult to understand him. His African accent if you will is so thick yet, that during his sermons, where he's just talking off the cuff, you're lucky to pick up 1 out of 3 or 4 words.

 

[Chaos Descending]

I would say that any language that's not related to English via the Indo-European language family would qualify.

Here's a list of just five off the top of my head:

Nahuatl (Uto-Aztecan Language Family)
Basque (Language Isolate)
Navajo (Na Dene Language Family)
Korean (Language Isolate)
Xhosa (NIger-Congo Language Family)

 

[M'Sharak]

The Finno-Ugric and Altaic language groups would fit that (non-Indo-European) category.

 

[Alaedhros]

I would say that any language that's not related to English via the Indo-European language family would qualify.

Here's a list of just five off the top of my head:

Nahuatl (Uto-Aztecan Language Family)
Basque (Language Isolate)
Navajo (Na Dene Language Family)
Korean (Language Isolate)
Xhosa (Niger-Congo Language Family)

This is a very good list and includes two that I was going to mention. I probably would have used an Afro-Asiatic or an Austro-Asiatic language in place of Korean, but there is merely to represent more families rather than have two isolates.

 

[ex nihilo]

I would say that any language that's not related to English via the Indo-European language family would qualify.

Here's a list of just five off the top of my head:

Nahuatl (Uto-Aztecan Language Family)
Basque (Language Isolate)
Navajo (Na Dene Language Family)
Korean (Language Isolate)
Xhosa (NIger-Congo Language Family)

Korean cannot be considered a complete “isolate”. The ancient Japanese and Koreans shared a common language that formed the root of the two tongues. Although the Japanese eventually adopted the Chinese form of writing during the earliest ages of feudal civilization, the language itself is unrelated to Chinese and more akin to Korean.

Its interesting to note that although the two languages are now as distinct as Old Low German and Old English were from each other, if one closes their eyes and focuses not on the words, but rather the cadence of the speech and the basic sentencing structures they sound nearly identical.

From a distance, even my wife, who is Japanese, will occasionally mistake Korean for Japanese.

 

[All Seeing Eye]

Arabic and Chinese/Japanese is probably the least similar.

 

[ex nihilo]

Arabic and Chinese/Japanese is probably the least similar.

Once again, Chinese and Japanese do not share a common ancestor so they should not be lumped together as you have.

An interesting side note, though, is that there is increasing evidence that proto-Japanese/Korean is really a member of the Altaic subgroup of the Ural-Altaic language family. This would place some of its modern “cousin” languages (those spoken in many of the “. . . stan” countries) in close geographic proximity with the origin site of modern Arabic (a descendant of the earliest Semitic language group spoken by the Akkadians in what is now Iraq).

 

[Terengo]

It depends on what you mean by "least like". For example, any language that isn't related to English will most likely differ greatly in vocabulary, but not necessarily in grammatical structure. For example, Middle Egyptian has (of course) no words in common with English (except what we borrowed), but I think it's sentence structure and general grammar features would be very familiar to an English-speaker. For total weirdness, you need something that turns English conventions around, eg. adjectives after nouns, verb-final, not relying on prepositions or conjuctions.

To me, Japanese is very different from English in its sentence structure, especially the way it handles subordinate clauses. I also like Swahili: its system of prefixes applied to verbs, adjectives and even adverbs is like nothing found in English.

 

[FalTorPan]

Thanks for the replies thus far!

It depends on what you mean by "least like". For example, any language that isn't related to English will most likely differ greatly in vocabulary, but not necessarily in grammatical structure.

I'm interested in languages that are different from English -- and from one another -- in terms of grammar. It sounds like many of the languages and language families mentioned here fit the bill nicely.

 

[Chaos Descending]

Korean cannot be considered a complete “isolate”. The ancient Japanese and Koreans shared a common language that formed the root of the two tongues. Although the Japanese eventually adopted the Chinese form of writing during the earliest ages of feudal civilization, the language itself is unrelated to Chinese and more akin to Korean.

You state this as if it is a fact, but the reality is a lot less clear. There is no real linguistic consensus on the relation of Korean to Japanese. One theory is of course that they share a common linguistic ancestor, while others theorize that the similarities to Korean and Japanese are due to a sprachbund effect. In other words, they are probably only similar because they "grew together" in some ways due to the relative proximity of the language speakers to one another. The current most widely held view is that there isn't enough evidence form a widely held view.

 

[ex nihilo]

Korean (Language Isolate)

Korean cannot be considered a complete “isolate”. The ancient Japanese and Koreans shared a common language that formed the root of the two tongues. Although the Japanese eventually adopted the Chinese form of writing during the earliest ages of feudal civilization, the language itself is unrelated to Chinese and more akin to Korean.

You state this as if it is a fact, but the reality is a lot less clear. . . The current most widely held view is that there isn't enough evidence form a widely held view.

So, based on your statement, we are both guilty of the unmitigated temerity to classify these two languages; you stating with authority they are separate, and I that they are related.

I guess the jury is still out on this one . . . but, as to the OP I believe you and I can agree that these two languages are very unique and very much unlike English. :thumbsup:

 

[Chaos Descending]

So, based on your statement, we are both guilty of the unmitigated temerity to classify these two languages; you stating with authority they are separate,

Just to clarify, I was intending to state anything "with authority". It's just that until there is a lot of compelling evidence showing that it's related to anything, and a general scientific consensus takes hold, I choose to call it a "Language isolate" because nothing else can be definitively proven. Besides, my goal was not to state that Korean was a language isolate, but to state that it's "different from English".

and I that they are related.

I guess the jury is still out on this one . . . but, as to the OP I believe you and I can agree that these two languages are very unique and very much unlike English. :thumbsup:

I agree. :thumbsup:

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

I'm interested in languages that are different from English -- and from one another -- in terms of grammar. It sounds like many of the languages and language families mentioned here fit the bill nicely.

Biblical Hebrew and related semitic languages (Arabic, Aramaic, et al) differ quite a bit from English grammatically. I specified Biblical Hebrew because modern Hebrew has been influenced by English (and other European languages I would imagine) in terms of word order, so it is a bit more similar.

An example:
English: Subject-Verb-Object
Hebrew: Verb-Subject-Object

Hebrew also lacks a present tense. Verbs only have past and future tense. Present tense is expressed using adjectives, though they are usually translated as verbs in English.

 

[Stormrage]

I would have to say German. I've heard that language is it is NOTHING like English. I can't understand how it's related to English.

 

[M'Sharak]

I would have to say German. I've heard that language is it is NOTHING like English. I can't understand how it's related to English.

English is considered a Germanic language by linguists.

To see the relation, all you need to do is to follow how words and language changed from c.-4th-century Anglish and Saxon through Old English (5th-12th-century), Middle English (late-11th to mid-15th -- by Chaucer in the late 14th, it begins to become recognizable as English to modern speakers, but you'd think it looked and sounded very odd) to Modern English (around the late 18th century, written English becomes very much like what we use today.) Infusions along the way from other Germanic languages (mainly Norse and Danish) and from French (the court language in England for a couple of centuries following the Norman Invasion) add to the mix.

Pronunciations and sentence structure have evolved over time, of course, as they also have in German over the same period, but as far as they may have diverged on the surface, they are still very closely related languages.

 

[Captain Intrepid]

"My name is pronounced !xobile."

 

[Deleted 2]

I would have to say German. I've heard that language is it is NOTHING like English. I can't understand how it's related to English.

fish Fisch
flesh Fleisch
nose Nase
foot Fut
hand Hand
finger Finger
when Wenn
boat Boot
to wander wandern

And many many words like them.

 

[Deckerd]

Anyone can compile word lists that correlate English to another language. That's because English is the most magpie language on the globe. Its structure is such that it can absorb any number of new words, as it has done for over a thousand years.

 

[Deleted 2]

Anyone can compile word lists that correlate English to another language. That's because English is the most magpie language on the globe.

It is ?

Its structure is such that it can absorb any number of new words, as it has done for over a thousand years.

And this is unusual?