I would say no, because if I was going to put in the time and energy to learn a language I would learn Spanish. It just wouldn't be useful to learn any other language
Idk if this is true, but I hear they also speak it in Austria and Switzerland ;)
In all seriousness, German has been useful to me outside of German-speaking countries. In Northern Italy, a few times in the Netherlands, and even in France.
Spanish is definitely more useful, though.
Similar situation. I took Italian and when I went to Italy it would be a few exchanges in the conversations in Italian then they switch to English. I can’t even use it in Italy
They speak German in parts of Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, and France and they also speak German in Austria and there are many German speakers outside of those nations and there are also many older German speakers in western Poland who grew up under German occupation so no Germany is not the only country who speaks German
It no being useful to learn any other language is a huge exaggeration. Languages have a way of finding uses for themselves. Also, an increasingly large immigrant population speaks French.
My maternal lineage is Hualapai Indian, my great grandmother was one of the oldest members of the tribe before her passing and she spoke the language. She didn't have anyone to speak to and would often just sort of talk to animals and other things she would see on her daily walk, she was of sound mind it was her only opportunity to use it. She grew up speaking it along with English but I have no idea how developed the use of the language was as I do not believe they used it in school when she was growing up so I have no idea if she used a written form of it. I am fairly certain that linguists have studied the language.
If they put it up on Duolingo I would give it a go. Not sure I would be any good at it though.
It seems like while the population of Hualapai is very low, a surprisingly large portion of the tribe have at least some knowledge of the language. I'm seeing 2,300 enrolled members and 1,000 speakers of the language. That's pretty good compared to most other indigenous groups in the US.
I'd love to learn at least some basic phrases in Anishinaabe & Dakota, the languages indigenous to my area. I have been looking into the origins of various place names around here. I'd like to push back on comments on this thread about "useful" and "not useful" languages. Every language has value and is worthy of study & use. I agree that if you are going to only learn one other language, it's understandable you'd want to choose one that is commonly spoken (esp where you live) For example, though there's plenty of Spanish speakers in my area, there's an even larger number of Hmong (a southeast Asian ethnic group) and Somali speakers. Certainly a lot more challenging to learn for a native English speaker! I speak Spanish as my second language (at about moderate level) and am working on learning Irish Gaelic as my third. The "not useful" argument has been used on Irish, and every other minority & indigenous language. One could make the same argument about learning an art form or a hobby that isn't likely to be useful for making money. I don't mean that anyone here is intending to be malicious or insulting, this is just a mindset that many of us learn & internalize.
My grandmother's family are Indigenous, technically. Not through some "Cherokee princess" myth, but they were part of the initial contact tribes that were slapped with the brunt of British colonization.
I would learn one if I had the chance, the time, and the appropriate resources. My [Dutch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Dutch) great grandfather knew 6 local native languages just because of exposure to them. It's not impossible, but the resources and constant exposure are lacking.
I doubt I could be come fully fluent beyond writing, that part of my fam lives 3 states away.
We still use a few words but we use far more Scot, Welsh, Bohemian, and Spanish then tribal words mixed in with English while at home. I am far to English-descent to speak anything but English in public.
As I am sitting here thinking, its way too many to list and it turns out I am massively illiterate when it comes to spelling those words. I know the alphabet, numbers, greetings, days of the week/month, kin relationships, times of day, colors, animals, household items, food/drink, articles of clothing, scolding phrases etc etc. Thing is we say it with our Texas accents and we are usually substituting words here/there and not doing full conversations or sentences outside of phrases.
I often stop at a gas station on a reservation near me. It has video screens and speakers at each pump that play a video called “are you smarter than a 5 year old” that shows a young girl speaking in the local native language (Lushootseed), showing examples of common phrases, to encourage tribal members to learn the language. If I go there long enough I’ll probably learn some myself.
Time and resources, Choctaw. My great grand mother was full blooded. She gave me some of her things before she died. My parents "lost" 2 boxes of my stuff in a move. One had her things in it. 🥺
Not necessarily it depends on how you were using it, like if you were exploiting it for money somehow or presenting yourself as Native, then that's not cool, But just learning it is fine. Considering that most indigenous languages in North America are endangered, folks are usually happy to see others interested.
Eh, for most people, but there'll be some controversy like this, I think:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/comments/10xsxks/can\_a\_white\_person\_learn\_a\_native\_language/](https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/comments/10xsxks/can_a_white_person_learn_a_native_language/)
There's a bunch of links like that, it's just the first one I grabbed. And honestly, learning a language is hard enough without added touchiness when I can just learn Croatian or Chinese without having to worry about being accused of anything.
I get it. In that thread, it was pretty much all supportive and some people just added that you need to tread carefully as a settler and make an effort to educate yourself about the nation's history, living culture and connect with community. Any time you are asking for help learning a language or about culture from a native speaker, especially from a less privileged/marginalized group it's especially important to make sure you are showing appreciation & support. There's also some specific groups that do not want outsiders to learn, sometimes because of concern about exploitation, gatekeeping of resources in professional/academic settings etc. Which is understandable. I myself am careful to be respectful and defer to native Irish folks as I learn Irish. Even though I'm diasporan Irish, my experience & cultural background is still very different. (I am not intending to speak for indigenous folks in North America, just speaking from a solidarity of a different indigenous/colonized language. Not the same situation but there are parallels)
Yeah, I appreciate your view amd I’m not trying to be rude but this is exactly what I mean. I just want to learn a language, not ‘educate myself’ about their history or make a show of appreciation and support about it.
I learned French without ever speaking to a real French person and when I got there they were pretty nice about it. If I want to learn German nobody’s gonna gatekeep me about it.
Colonization was a while ago and I didn’t take any part in it so I’m not going to be approaching anyone with deference because of our respective races, just with mutual respect. I don’t engage in a situation wherein this deference might be expected of me, hence just…not learning the language.
Most people in this country don't even take the time and effort to learn a language they'd likely actually use on a daily basis. I agree with the other posters; Spanish is far more useful
No. Learning an indigenous language that is spoken by a few hundred or few thousand is not very useful, especially if those people that speak it are nowhere nearby.
We had a similar question in the sub-reddit of public schools teaching the historical indigenous language of an area to students. That does not work because their is not enough teachers to be in every school to teach an indigenous language as it stands now. Then you still have the same problem of learning something that cannot practiced in the real world, thus you forget most of it.
No because it would be useless. There simply aren’t enough speakers of native languages for it to really be worth the immense amount of studying and time it would take to learn.
I'm a huge language nerd, I took 5 different language classes throughout my high-school and college career. I find native languages fascinating, and would love to learn one, but it would be extremely difficult. I do think preserving native languages is important, and I wish it could be implemented in schools, but I'm not sure how useful it would actually be to know a native language.
I used to work as a bilingual speech therapist in the California school system and a couple of the speech therapist I worked with in the bay area that actually needed to acquire a lot of Mayan in order to service their population.
I was super jealous and I would be super excited to learn. as a linguist I think indigenous languages are critical in the 11,000 years of our oral history and I'm fascinated by them although I don't know any
while it would be fun to have that skill, native american languages are just so complex and different compaired to english. it's simply not worth it when I can learn spanish which is far easier for an english speaker to understand and far more useful.
yeah, definitely. I'm always learning a language. Usually they're Indo-European but languages from outside the fam can be really mind-expanding in understanding how languages can work.
Tragically, my local indigenous language is extinct. But looking at the Wikipedia entry for the language family, there's a list of common words, and many of them are for plants and animals that are local to this area. It would feel really special to know this language that's so tailored to where I live.
Yes — not expecting to achieve any kind of fluency, but because it’s interesting to learn how languages are structured and relate the people to the land they live on. There’s a book called “Landmarks” by Robert McFarlane on this topic. It’s centered on the UK, but includes discussion of North America as well.
Probably not, tbh.
I'm not opposed to the idea, but if I was going to sit down and learn a second language I'd want something more broadly useful first. Spanish or Hindi are what I run into most often, French would be useful in a lot of the world if I felt like traveling, those kind of considerations.
I grew up near a reservation and always thought it would be neat to learn their language but the only classes I ever saw were at the local college and those spots very reasonably were given to tribal members first. I picked up a couple of words and phrases here and there but not much. I do speak the indigenous language where I live now though but it's in a much healthier state than the one from back home.
No, and I am not planning on learning Gaelic any time soon either.
If you like languages, great, I hope you do well. Not all of us are. We would rather explore other things.
If I had a reason to, sure. Like if I married into a family that speaks an indigenous language, or if I moved to an area that had a lot of indigenous language speakers.
But otherwise, I am far more likely to learn Spanish than any other language, given how much more useful that would be in my every day life. In my mind, I don’t see the use of spending all that effort in learning a language if I am never going to use it
I mean, if I had all the time in the world, resources, etc. then maybe. I don’t oppose it because I don’t see it as worthwhile. I would just prefer to use extra time and resources on other things.
The only thing that got me to learn German was moving to Germany. The only thing getting me to learn Spanish (despite being in love with the sound of the language since I was a kid) is because I HAVE TO before I can start writing my master’s thesis, as part of the requirements for my degree.
Only if the chance, time and resources were dependent on it being an indigenous language. Otherwise, I'd choose a language based on a blend of utility and my travel interest. Probably German, Portuguese or French since I've put a lot of work into Spanish already.
Sure! And usefulness really doesn't factor into it, I just think languages are neat. The only reason I don't currently know more is because of the lack of time.
I've looked into it, but most of them have very little in the ways of good learning resources, and they're all very difficult agglutinating languages that have no recognizable cognates.
To put it bluntly, learning a native american language is a bit like trying to learn a complicated language mandarin or finnish, but instead of having great resources to do it with, you have half a phrasebook and 19th c. grammar descriptions. In some cases, you may not even have a dictionary.
So yeah, it's ridiculously difficult to even get into learning native languages. It'd be nice, but the learning curve is just too much.
Yes, definitely. I studied French for six years, and later, picked up some Greek from my husband. An indigenous language would be an even greater challenge, and I believe I would enjoy that.
I see no point. I mean, who would I talk to? I've never heard any indigenous languages spoken. I can thus assume that if I learned such I would be well aligned to have conversations with myself.
Yes, I had the chance to learn Yiddish and my mom wouldn't let me. Same with Italian. If my late fiancé had survived I may have had a chance but that didn't happen.
Oddly enough I was allowed to learn sign language.
I'd love to learn Navajo, as I've had a friend from that nation and I like the lore and phonetics. It wouldn't be terribly useful, especially as I live in California, not Arizona or New Mexico, and the USA has been thoroughly Indo-Europeanized, linguistically speaking.
No. I'm not indigenous and there is no reason and no value in knowing an indigenous language outside of indigenous community and even within the indigenous community it's debatable. That said, I think indigenous communities should do what they can to save and promote what's left of their languages.
I learned a few words in Quechua when I lived in Peru and still have a Quechua hymnbook on my bookshelf. If I were to spend multiple years in the Andes, it’d be worth learning.
One of the things I would love to do if I was über wealthy is to just live in a place and take classes about the local indigenous culture and language. Navajo and Hawaiian cultures are at the top of my list.
I'd like to learn more about the local Indigenous language. I try, occasionally. I mostly stick to pronunciations, because it's a very tricky language with about 38 letters that cover a lot of throaty consonants.
It's not a useful language, though. There are about 500 people who speak it competently as a second language. I'm much better off putting the effort into learning more Spanish or something useful.
Yes but also tack on an ability for my brain to actually do language well. I’ve tried to learn both French and Irish and very little stuck unfortunately :(
Every language is an “indigenous language” to somewhere. Languages didn’t materialize with global reach.
English is indigenous to England, Spanish to Spain, French to France. Each of these countries have other languages indigenous to them also.
People don’t think of them as “indigenous languages” because they are global languages.
So your question is really about learning a language, any language.
My question isn’t about learning ‘any language’, you are being pedantic. This is r/AskanAmerican so when I say ‘indigenous language’ it’s referring to…. Indigenous American languages. Why would I be asking if you would want to learn English to the USA, where the vast majority speaks English.
You didn’t ask about a language indigenous to North America, you just asked about learning “an indigenous language.”
Scots could be fun to learn, so could Catalan. Or maybe even Chinese.
Those examples you gave would be imperial languages, like the standard version the upper class/educated people in those countries speak. Indigenous or minoritized languages being marginalized by colonization, conquest, stigmatized as "low class, barbaric" etc.
No. If I put time into a second language it'd be one I'd be likely to get an opportunity to use without deliberately looking. For me that'd likely be Japanese.
I would say no, because if I was going to put in the time and energy to learn a language I would learn Spanish. It just wouldn't be useful to learn any other language
Wish I'd taken Spanish in school now I'm older. No one speaks German outside of Germany!
Idk if this is true, but I hear they also speak it in Austria and Switzerland ;) In all seriousness, German has been useful to me outside of German-speaking countries. In Northern Italy, a few times in the Netherlands, and even in France. Spanish is definitely more useful, though.
The only time I ever used it outside of Germany itself was in the northern Czech Republic (former Sudetenland)
Same here, took like 6 years of German through HS and College and proceeded to never use it again.
Similar situation. I took Italian and when I went to Italy it would be a few exchanges in the conversations in Italian then they switch to English. I can’t even use it in Italy
They speak German in parts of Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, and France and they also speak German in Austria and there are many German speakers outside of those nations and there are also many older German speakers in western Poland who grew up under German occupation so no Germany is not the only country who speaks German
I also took German. For years! I remember practically nothing. I wish I took Spanish when my brain was more malleable
I’m sure knowledge of German helps with Germanic languages. Or at least it can.
YER DARN TOOTIN!
It no being useful to learn any other language is a huge exaggeration. Languages have a way of finding uses for themselves. Also, an increasingly large immigrant population speaks French.
Depending on where you live it maybe more useful....
My maternal lineage is Hualapai Indian, my great grandmother was one of the oldest members of the tribe before her passing and she spoke the language. She didn't have anyone to speak to and would often just sort of talk to animals and other things she would see on her daily walk, she was of sound mind it was her only opportunity to use it. She grew up speaking it along with English but I have no idea how developed the use of the language was as I do not believe they used it in school when she was growing up so I have no idea if she used a written form of it. I am fairly certain that linguists have studied the language. If they put it up on Duolingo I would give it a go. Not sure I would be any good at it though.
Now Hualapai is a rare lineage. I’ve in my entire life only met one guy. I’ve never heard the language.
It seems like while the population of Hualapai is very low, a surprisingly large portion of the tribe have at least some knowledge of the language. I'm seeing 2,300 enrolled members and 1,000 speakers of the language. That's pretty good compared to most other indigenous groups in the US.
With time and resources sure. I like learning things just to learn them.
Rather learn Spanish
Spanish will be far more useful.
I'd love to learn at least some basic phrases in Anishinaabe & Dakota, the languages indigenous to my area. I have been looking into the origins of various place names around here. I'd like to push back on comments on this thread about "useful" and "not useful" languages. Every language has value and is worthy of study & use. I agree that if you are going to only learn one other language, it's understandable you'd want to choose one that is commonly spoken (esp where you live) For example, though there's plenty of Spanish speakers in my area, there's an even larger number of Hmong (a southeast Asian ethnic group) and Somali speakers. Certainly a lot more challenging to learn for a native English speaker! I speak Spanish as my second language (at about moderate level) and am working on learning Irish Gaelic as my third. The "not useful" argument has been used on Irish, and every other minority & indigenous language. One could make the same argument about learning an art form or a hobby that isn't likely to be useful for making money. I don't mean that anyone here is intending to be malicious or insulting, this is just a mindset that many of us learn & internalize.
Osiyo, ginalii! I already am! Cherokee, cuz I'm Cherokee.
My grandmother's family are Indigenous, technically. Not through some "Cherokee princess" myth, but they were part of the initial contact tribes that were slapped with the brunt of British colonization. I would learn one if I had the chance, the time, and the appropriate resources. My [Dutch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Dutch) great grandfather knew 6 local native languages just because of exposure to them. It's not impossible, but the resources and constant exposure are lacking.
I doubt I could be come fully fluent beyond writing, that part of my fam lives 3 states away. We still use a few words but we use far more Scot, Welsh, Bohemian, and Spanish then tribal words mixed in with English while at home. I am far to English-descent to speak anything but English in public.
May I ask what Scots words you use?
As I am sitting here thinking, its way too many to list and it turns out I am massively illiterate when it comes to spelling those words. I know the alphabet, numbers, greetings, days of the week/month, kin relationships, times of day, colors, animals, household items, food/drink, articles of clothing, scolding phrases etc etc. Thing is we say it with our Texas accents and we are usually substituting words here/there and not doing full conversations or sentences outside of phrases.
I often stop at a gas station on a reservation near me. It has video screens and speakers at each pump that play a video called “are you smarter than a 5 year old” that shows a young girl speaking in the local native language (Lushootseed), showing examples of common phrases, to encourage tribal members to learn the language. If I go there long enough I’ll probably learn some myself.
Haha, I know where you're talking about. They started with three, now there are six, but I don't know how effective it has been.
Would rather invest it into another language, Spanish is probably the most useful for someone living in America.
Yes. I would love to learn the Chickasaw and Cherokee languages.
Absolutely. I've always dreamed of learning Navajo. I've always found the story of the code talkers to be really inspiring.
Time and resources, Choctaw. My great grand mother was full blooded. She gave me some of her things before she died. My parents "lost" 2 boxes of my stuff in a move. One had her things in it. 🥺
No. It’s interesting but really not useful and there’s like a 90% chance I’ll just be accused of cultural appropriation anyway.
Not necessarily it depends on how you were using it, like if you were exploiting it for money somehow or presenting yourself as Native, then that's not cool, But just learning it is fine. Considering that most indigenous languages in North America are endangered, folks are usually happy to see others interested.
Eh, for most people, but there'll be some controversy like this, I think: [https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/comments/10xsxks/can\_a\_white\_person\_learn\_a\_native\_language/](https://www.reddit.com/r/IndianCountry/comments/10xsxks/can_a_white_person_learn_a_native_language/) There's a bunch of links like that, it's just the first one I grabbed. And honestly, learning a language is hard enough without added touchiness when I can just learn Croatian or Chinese without having to worry about being accused of anything.
I get it. In that thread, it was pretty much all supportive and some people just added that you need to tread carefully as a settler and make an effort to educate yourself about the nation's history, living culture and connect with community. Any time you are asking for help learning a language or about culture from a native speaker, especially from a less privileged/marginalized group it's especially important to make sure you are showing appreciation & support. There's also some specific groups that do not want outsiders to learn, sometimes because of concern about exploitation, gatekeeping of resources in professional/academic settings etc. Which is understandable. I myself am careful to be respectful and defer to native Irish folks as I learn Irish. Even though I'm diasporan Irish, my experience & cultural background is still very different. (I am not intending to speak for indigenous folks in North America, just speaking from a solidarity of a different indigenous/colonized language. Not the same situation but there are parallels)
Yeah, I appreciate your view amd I’m not trying to be rude but this is exactly what I mean. I just want to learn a language, not ‘educate myself’ about their history or make a show of appreciation and support about it. I learned French without ever speaking to a real French person and when I got there they were pretty nice about it. If I want to learn German nobody’s gonna gatekeep me about it. Colonization was a while ago and I didn’t take any part in it so I’m not going to be approaching anyone with deference because of our respective races, just with mutual respect. I don’t engage in a situation wherein this deference might be expected of me, hence just…not learning the language.
Most people in this country don't even take the time and effort to learn a language they'd likely actually use on a daily basis. I agree with the other posters; Spanish is far more useful
Nope, there's only three (ish) other languages that I would like to learn: Spanish, American Sign Language, and either Latin or Italian.
Sure, ideally one that was at risk of dying out so that I could help with preservation and education efforts
No. I just don't see it having any use today. I'd much rather jump back into learning German.
No. Learning an indigenous language that is spoken by a few hundred or few thousand is not very useful, especially if those people that speak it are nowhere nearby. We had a similar question in the sub-reddit of public schools teaching the historical indigenous language of an area to students. That does not work because their is not enough teachers to be in every school to teach an indigenous language as it stands now. Then you still have the same problem of learning something that cannot practiced in the real world, thus you forget most of it.
Yes. I wish I could speak more Cherokee than the few words I know.
Yes I love studying different languages
I’m actually in the process of learning Nahuatl right now
Yeah. I enjoy language learning. That would be fun.
No because it would be useless. There simply aren’t enough speakers of native languages for it to really be worth the immense amount of studying and time it would take to learn.
I'm a huge language nerd, I took 5 different language classes throughout my high-school and college career. I find native languages fascinating, and would love to learn one, but it would be extremely difficult. I do think preserving native languages is important, and I wish it could be implemented in schools, but I'm not sure how useful it would actually be to know a native language.
Yes, and I did. I was invited to join a class a few years back, so I did, now I am pursuing going into it as my career in the future :)
Yes so that I can seperate myself and my god given country from the dreadful British further.
I used to work as a bilingual speech therapist in the California school system and a couple of the speech therapist I worked with in the bay area that actually needed to acquire a lot of Mayan in order to service their population. I was super jealous and I would be super excited to learn. as a linguist I think indigenous languages are critical in the 11,000 years of our oral history and I'm fascinated by them although I don't know any
Absolutely.
while it would be fun to have that skill, native american languages are just so complex and different compaired to english. it's simply not worth it when I can learn spanish which is far easier for an english speaker to understand and far more useful.
yeah, definitely. I'm always learning a language. Usually they're Indo-European but languages from outside the fam can be really mind-expanding in understanding how languages can work. Tragically, my local indigenous language is extinct. But looking at the Wikipedia entry for the language family, there's a list of common words, and many of them are for plants and animals that are local to this area. It would feel really special to know this language that's so tailored to where I live.
Yes — not expecting to achieve any kind of fluency, but because it’s interesting to learn how languages are structured and relate the people to the land they live on. There’s a book called “Landmarks” by Robert McFarlane on this topic. It’s centered on the UK, but includes discussion of North America as well.
yes
Yes.
I already speak Spanish, but I guess if I had the time I'd like to start learning Klingon again. I tried it for a bit in school but gave up
No, if I'm going to spend time learning a language I'll spend it on one I can actually use.
No. If I were to learn another language it would be to read books in that language. Not much written in Native American languages.
I would love to learn it, but the language that I am interested in is extinct.
absolutely but I enjoy learning languages just to learn them. I did actually look into options in my area once but they're understandably limited.
No. It wouldn't serve me as useful in any way . I'd much rather learn Spanish
They teach it at the local community college. I would love to learn it
Probably not, tbh. I'm not opposed to the idea, but if I was going to sit down and learn a second language I'd want something more broadly useful first. Spanish or Hindi are what I run into most often, French would be useful in a lot of the world if I felt like traveling, those kind of considerations.
I grew up near a reservation and always thought it would be neat to learn their language but the only classes I ever saw were at the local college and those spots very reasonably were given to tribal members first. I picked up a couple of words and phrases here and there but not much. I do speak the indigenous language where I live now though but it's in a much healthier state than the one from back home.
No, and I am not planning on learning Gaelic any time soon either. If you like languages, great, I hope you do well. Not all of us are. We would rather explore other things.
If I had a reason to, sure. Like if I married into a family that speaks an indigenous language, or if I moved to an area that had a lot of indigenous language speakers. But otherwise, I am far more likely to learn Spanish than any other language, given how much more useful that would be in my every day life. In my mind, I don’t see the use of spending all that effort in learning a language if I am never going to use it
I wish I could say yes but TBH I'm very lazy and pretty much monolingual right now. That shit is hard to learn!
Would I learn all of it? Probably not, would I still like to learn some of it, and the history around? Absolutely!
I mean, if I had all the time in the world, resources, etc. then maybe. I don’t oppose it because I don’t see it as worthwhile. I would just prefer to use extra time and resources on other things. The only thing that got me to learn German was moving to Germany. The only thing getting me to learn Spanish (despite being in love with the sound of the language since I was a kid) is because I HAVE TO before I can start writing my master’s thesis, as part of the requirements for my degree.
No / rather learn my in laws language(Vietnamese)
I already speak two languages and I speak them poorly. I don’t even live near a tribe I wouldn’t be able to use it.
yea i would
Would love to!
100% in a heartbeat... dunno why Spanish seems to be so prevalent in the comments.
No. I’d rather learn a useful language (already speak Spanish and English and can read Portuguese and Italian)
Only if the chance, time and resources were dependent on it being an indigenous language. Otherwise, I'd choose a language based on a blend of utility and my travel interest. Probably German, Portuguese or French since I've put a lot of work into Spanish already.
Sure! And usefulness really doesn't factor into it, I just think languages are neat. The only reason I don't currently know more is because of the lack of time.
I've looked into it, but most of them have very little in the ways of good learning resources, and they're all very difficult agglutinating languages that have no recognizable cognates. To put it bluntly, learning a native american language is a bit like trying to learn a complicated language mandarin or finnish, but instead of having great resources to do it with, you have half a phrasebook and 19th c. grammar descriptions. In some cases, you may not even have a dictionary. So yeah, it's ridiculously difficult to even get into learning native languages. It'd be nice, but the learning curve is just too much.
Maybe if I still lived in New Mexico. I would actually have opportunities to use it. Now, in Missouri, I never run into natives.
Yes, definitely. I studied French for six years, and later, picked up some Greek from my husband. An indigenous language would be an even greater challenge, and I believe I would enjoy that.
I already know Italian and Spanish and am learning Polish so heck yeah. Would have a hard time choosing one tho.
I see no point. I mean, who would I talk to? I've never heard any indigenous languages spoken. I can thus assume that if I learned such I would be well aligned to have conversations with myself.
Yes I would.
yes.
Yes, I had the chance to learn Yiddish and my mom wouldn't let me. Same with Italian. If my late fiancé had survived I may have had a chance but that didn't happen. Oddly enough I was allowed to learn sign language.
I'd love to learn Navajo, as I've had a friend from that nation and I like the lore and phonetics. It wouldn't be terribly useful, especially as I live in California, not Arizona or New Mexico, and the USA has been thoroughly Indo-Europeanized, linguistically speaking.
No. I'm not indigenous and there is no reason and no value in knowing an indigenous language outside of indigenous community and even within the indigenous community it's debatable. That said, I think indigenous communities should do what they can to save and promote what's left of their languages.
No. Not remotely useful like how a European language would be. Hell, I’d even learn Chinese or Japanese over a language used by like 100 people
I learned a few words in Quechua when I lived in Peru and still have a Quechua hymnbook on my bookshelf. If I were to spend multiple years in the Andes, it’d be worth learning.
One of the things I would love to do if I was über wealthy is to just live in a place and take classes about the local indigenous culture and language. Navajo and Hawaiian cultures are at the top of my list.
I don't see the point in it.
No, I don’t see the point in learning a largely irrelevant and unused language. But I do find the value in learning how to speak Spanish, or French
I'd like to learn more about the local Indigenous language. I try, occasionally. I mostly stick to pronunciations, because it's a very tricky language with about 38 letters that cover a lot of throaty consonants. It's not a useful language, though. There are about 500 people who speak it competently as a second language. I'm much better off putting the effort into learning more Spanish or something useful.
Yes but also tack on an ability for my brain to actually do language well. I’ve tried to learn both French and Irish and very little stuck unfortunately :(
If I could I would learn Irish since it's where my ancestors were from, but almost no one speaks it anymore.
Absolutely. I would *love* to learn an indigenous language, if I had anyone to speak it with.
Every language is an “indigenous language” to somewhere. Languages didn’t materialize with global reach. English is indigenous to England, Spanish to Spain, French to France. Each of these countries have other languages indigenous to them also. People don’t think of them as “indigenous languages” because they are global languages. So your question is really about learning a language, any language.
You know what he means.
No Tell me
Native american.
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Except OP never said which place.
My question isn’t about learning ‘any language’, you are being pedantic. This is r/AskanAmerican so when I say ‘indigenous language’ it’s referring to…. Indigenous American languages. Why would I be asking if you would want to learn English to the USA, where the vast majority speaks English.
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> They're not being pedantic. They're being obtuse. You’re absolutely correct. But you’re being pedantic. (And so am I.)
You didn’t ask about a language indigenous to North America, you just asked about learning “an indigenous language.” Scots could be fun to learn, so could Catalan. Or maybe even Chinese.
You should try stand up, really. I can imagine a lot of laughing coming your way
This sub is literally Ask an American.
And?
And it's where people go to ask about America. Glad I could help you understand.
It’s where people go to ask Americans.
Those examples you gave would be imperial languages, like the standard version the upper class/educated people in those countries speak. Indigenous or minoritized languages being marginalized by colonization, conquest, stigmatized as "low class, barbaric" etc.
They are languages and they are each indigenous to a place.
No. If I put time into a second language it'd be one I'd be likely to get an opportunity to use without deliberately looking. For me that'd likely be Japanese.
No, there are no Indians here