I love the rain. ^_^

[tsukikage]

Nastassja took the free ColorQuiz.com personality test! "Seeks the determination and elasticity of will nec..." Click here to read the rest of the results.

(Central-)Okinawan (Uchiinaguchi, Luchu) [first choice – not enough resources available?]
Okinawan is a member of the Japonic language family, and the Ryukyuan sub-family. It is spoken by approximately 1,000,000 of Japan’s 120,000,000 Okinawans. Adult speakers can also understand and use Standard Japanese. Those 20 to 50 can understand Okinawan, but use Japanese at home and work. The younger the generation, the more fluently they speak Japanese. Those under 20 are mainly monolingual in Japanese

Esperanto (La Lingvo Internacia) [second choice – not allowed as a constructed language?]
Esperanto is a constructed (or artificial) language. There are an estimated two million active speakers of Esperanto, and a thousand or so native speakers. Esperanto is spoken in about 115 countries, and is used most widely in central and eastern Europe, China and other countries in eastern Asia, certain areas of South America, and southwest Asia. There are no countries which have adopted Esperanto as their official or national language.

Korean (Hanguohua, Hanguk Mal) [third choice]
Korean is considered to be a language isolate, or possibly an Altaic language (the existence of an Altaic language family is debated, many scholars instead thinking that the similarities between so-called Altaic languages to be caused by language diffusion). There are an estimated 67 million speakers of Korean, including 42 million in South Korea and 20 million in North Korea, where Korean is the official language. Korean is also spoken in China, Japan, Thailand, and a number of other countries.

Comments

[crculver.livejournal.com]

During my decade of activity in the Esperanto movement, I found that the 2 million figure is a massive and dishonest exaggeration. There are probably no more than 50,000 people who use Esperanto fairly often and to a decent level. Also, Esperanto is dying in eastern Asia; when I was at the World Congress of Esperanto in Beijing in 2004, only a couple of thousand Chinese came (out of a population of over a billion), and most of them weren't even capable of holding a basic conversation in the language. Esperantists always like to talk about certain countries as if they were a Shangri-La where everyone speaks Esperanto, but the fact of the matter is that the vast majority of the world isn't interesting in their made-up and is concentrating on learning English and other real languages.

[tsukikage85.livejournal.com]

That's good to know - thank you.

I Vote O

[(Anonymous)]

See previous.
Okinawan grammars? [Sep. 21st, 2005|08:38 pm]