tlhIngan Hol vIghojtaH!

    • chaogomu
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      302 years ago

      That’s what multiple genocides get you. A language rated as Vulnerable in UNESCO.

      Still, there are about 170,000 people who speak Navajo, with about 8000 who only speak Navajo.

      • @bionicjoey@lemmy.ca
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        32 years ago

        US: kills all the Navajo speakers

        Also US: “Wow, there are so few Navajo speakers! We should use it as a secret military code!”

        • @Wahots@pawb.social
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          22 years ago

          It wasn’t just Navajo. It was also encrypted/coded in Navajo to make it even more complicated on top of an already complex language. The code talkers were incredibly important to the war effort. The code was never cracked either. Makes me really proud of them for doing such a good (and dangerous) job.

      • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin
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        12 years ago

        Also doesn’t help that Navajo is an INCREDIBLY divergent language compared to basically everything else, even other languages native to North America save those of related languages.

        It’s probably as close to a natlang ithkuil as linguistic science may have ever discovered, so acquiring it non-natively is A TON of work.

        Also I may be confusing it with another indigenous language but IIRC there are some Navajo nation communities in which teaching the language to outsiders is seen as a GRAVE offense.

        You can guess that the course on Duolingo isn’t exactly regarded as on par with their French and Spanish courses. That and their attempt at Hawaiian and the ensuant backlash over how bad both were are partially responsible for why Duolingo has yet to expand into a significant number of new languages.

    • @Aldn@lemmy.world
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      62 years ago

      It’s a real shame duolingo doesn’t have Farsi (or none of the other apps I’m routinely using, for that matter). Let’s hope it becomes a thing sooner than later

  • Resol van Lemmy
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    32 years ago

    I can’t find Doolish anywhere on the list though.

    Oh wait, that language doesn’t exist.

  • ComradeSharkfucker
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    422 years ago

    Fascinating that Duolingo tries to teach Navajo. The language is incredibly tonal and with sounds not native to most languages. I imagine it’s incredibly difficult to teach through an online service

    • Apathy Tree
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      82 years ago

      Idk how duolinguo works (at all), but if the app can play the sounds for you and judge on your pronunciation, that would be quite enough to do the job. If it can handle mandarin (idk if it can) than any tonal based language is fair game.

      I would think any decent speech to text could do a decent job determining pronunciation, if there isn’t a dedicated thing for that… either it registers or it gets garble and you try again.

  • @crashoverride@lemmy.world
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    292 years ago

    High Valerian also doesn’t have all the ingredients to become an actual language. All I did was translate words in sentences into the language for the show, but Klingon, it is an actual language and has been developed enough that you can call it a language

    • @grue@lemmy.world
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      11 year ago

      Yeah, Klingon was deliberately designed to have object-verb-subject word order (among other unusual features) just to make it more alien.

  • Neato
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    82 years ago

    I don’t think High Valyrian is an actual language…

    • Seven
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      112 years ago

      Last time I looked it still did a weird mix of American and European Spanish, too

      • @Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        102 years ago

        It had me pick Latin American or Castilian Spanish when I started using Duolingo, I couldn’t tell you exactly how accurate it was though.

        • Seven
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          42 years ago

          When was that? Last time I tried it was a couple of years ago.

          As for the difference, outside of Spain the conjugation of Vosotros (you, plural) isn’t used, but speaking to strangers is much more formal. Also, there’s a lot of vocabulary differences which can be confusing for non-native speakers.

          Good luck with your learning, it’s a great language :-)

          • @Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            22 years ago

            About two years ago for me as well, they might have rolled it out shortly after you tried or maybe I was part of some A/B testing or something. But the setting seems to be saved because I’m never given exercises with vosotros in them.

            ¡Gracias! Vivo en California, así que hay mucha gente para practicar hablando conmigo, pero estoy tímido y practico solo con Duolingo por ahora.

            • Seven
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              12 years ago

              Best thing would be to go to a Spanish speaking country for a holiday, once you’ve been forced to use it on strangers you’ll loose your language anxiety and it gets much easier (I live in Spain and work in Spanish, I’m not very good, but also no longer worried about muddling through).

          • @Stoney_Logica1@lemmy.worldOP
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            42 years ago

            As somebody who doesn’t naively speak Latin American Spanish but was exposed to it a lot growing up, the “th” sound for some words with “c” (like “gracias”) in Castilian Spanish really disturbs me. It sounds like everybody has a lisp.

            • Seven
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              22 years ago

              It is a lisp, albeit on purpose … to further confuse things in parts of Spain with different languages the shared words don’t necessarily have that lisp!

  • @niktemadur@lemmy.world
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    32 years ago

    Many asteroids and Kuiper Belt objects discovered by the Keck telescope, on the big island, have been given Hawaiian names, adding to the very few words I knew before, like aloha, mahalo, pahoa’hoa and a’a, the last two being types of lava, either runny or crumbly.

  • Smuuthbrane
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    292 years ago

    I almost found a way to get university credit for learning Klingon. My downfall was that the Klingon Language Institute was not an “accredited” learning institution. I wonder if that’s changed yet…