Language Videos

Thai. Spoken in Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia and the surrounding area by around 75 million. More at Wikipedia and Omniglot.

A really cool video of a polyglot, or person who can speak multiple languages, by the name of Stuart Jay Raj. This man is of Thai and I think Chinese and Australian descent and can speak almost 30 languages. This video is an interview in Thai, as he speaks Thai and lives in Thailand, and is really cool to listen to. Finally a good sample of Thai, and what’s cool is you can hear Thai along with other samples of languages he speaks.

The language is truly amazing and I think I want to learn one of the Kradai languages one day. Hmm.

Let me know what you think!

P.S. - Some more videos of maybe Alexander Argüelles or Richard Simcott, other cool polyglots.

October 25, 2009  

Dutch. Spoken natively in the Netherlands, Belgium, Suriname, Aruba, Netherlands Antilles, areas of France and Germany, and additionally in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, bits of Indonesia, and somewhat in South Africa, by around 50 total (22+ native, 27+ non-native). Wow. More at Wikipedia and Omniglot.

An interesting little broadcast about SMS, looking like it was from the beginning of the text-messaging boom a couple years ago. Kind of cool to listen to. It’s weird that the Dutch accent is much like English (for Americans), as it’s difficult to find another language that uses such non-articulate-ish, very brusque almost, kind of speaking. I don’t know, it’s hard to describe. I mean like not like Spanish or German with rolled “R”s and articulate vowels, etc. Anyway.

I really want to learn Dutch and plan on buying a book called Learn Dutch for English Speakers here at Amazon. I think there’s a cheaper on at my all-time favorite book-finding website, Bookfinder. SO many good rare books that can be searched from all the major sites: Amazon, Alibris, Abebooks, Biblio, etc.

Enjoy Dutch!

★   6 notes  

Azerbaijani. Spoken in Azerbaijan, Iran, Georgia, Armenia and the surrounding area by anywhere from 20-30 million. More at Wikipedia and Omniglot.

A video about a Democratic Convention (showing Obama and others) in the interesting language of Azerbaijani, or Azeri. This language much resembles Turkish, which was featured here at LanguageVideos. Unfortunately it does not have as many resources, so a good idea to go about learning Azeri is to learn Turkish first, as, e.g., this and this book are amazing, and then learn Azeri using a reader like this (which I got from Indiana University Bloomington, where I want to study, for free! You may have to email for a password here to get in). I plan on doing something similar to that.

Ah, sorry if so confusing. Anyway, Azeri is great and Azerbaijan looks like a really cool place! Enjoy.

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Uzbek. Spoken in Uzbekistan and the surrounding area by around 20 million. More at Wikipedia and Omniglot.

An interesting video special by Voice of America (VOA) on YouTube. Actually relating to our last post on Kyrgyz, this video features a famous Kyrgyz author, Chingiz Aytmatov, but has been prepared for Uzbek speakers. Uzbek is unfortunately kind of lacking resources but that shouldn’t stop anyone from learning this very interesting language! There’s a five-lesson beginning course at I Kinda Like Languages here.

I love Uzbek! Enjoy, Brian

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Kyrgyz. Spoken in the former Soviet republic, Kyrgyzstan, by around 2-4 million. More at Wikipedia and Omniglot.

A little video of a Filipino lady, I think descending from Kyrgyzstan, speaking Kyrgyz and singing a little. It was basically the only I could find of just casual speaking in Kyrgyz. I’m actually really interested in this language and have a little blog about Kyrgyzstan here. There’s just something about it; I don’t know. I want to study it at IUB. I just ordered a video and resources on it.

Anyway, enjoy!

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(Sorry couldn’t embed without illegal re-upload. Just click on the green banner above for ones like these.)

Aymara. Spoken in Peru, Bolivia and Chile by around 3 million. More at Wikipedia and Omniglot.

An interesting video of people speaking Aymara, first one not from YouTube. Found this at a really amazing site for finding classes and resources, the CARLA Center for Less Commonly-Taught Languages here. Their is an amazing database search here for finding classes at universities, summer programs, abroad studies, etc. and it’s updated (link here). Found this video here with their materials. What a helpful site — the Internet is really amazing. Another amazing one I’ve been meaning to mention — UCLA’s Language Material Project that has a ton of searchable resources and descriptions of textbooks, really awesome (here).

Anyway, Aymara. Very cool sounding and unique. Similar to Quechua, a language I’ll be featuring soon. Love Amerindian languages. More videos from CARLA soon.

October 14, 2009  

Yiddish. Spoken in countries all over the world (no specific nationality) by around three million. More at Wikipedia and Omniglot.

An interesting video of a man speaking Yiddish and talking about the language and its history and current status. I would like to learn Yiddish. I’m not Jewish and have no affiliation with anything Hebrew/Yiddish/Jewish/Israel-related, but I think Yiddish is interesting. This book and this dictionary look the best; they’re by a very well-related author.

October 13, 2009  

Turkish. Spoken in Turkey and in many other countries by around 70 million. More at Wikipedia and Omniglot.

A news cast about some kind of event. I really love the sound of Turkish. Am studying it very much lately, using this book and this book. Turkic languages are very interesting and I think it is a good idea to start with Turkish if I want to study other Turkic languages in the future, like Kazakh, Kyrgyz or Uzbek.

October 10, 2009   3 notes  

Malaysian / Malay / Bahasa Melayu. Spoken in Malaysia by over 176 million. More at Wikipedia and Omniglot.

A video of some Malaysian language contest for foreigners or something. Thought it was cool. Enjoy.

★   2 notes  

Faroese. Spoken in the Faroe Islands (owned by Denmark) by around 60,000-80,000. More at Wikipedia and Omniglot.

A news cast in Faroese, a language related to Icelandic and the other Scandinavian languages. Very interesting sound. I’d like to learn it; found out about it at Alexander Argüelles’ video introduction here. This book seems like a good resource.

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