The World’s Weirdest Languages

Being able to communicate with other people is a basic human need, which is why every region and culture on the planet has a spoken language. However, some of them are stranger than others, such as the following ones:

Archi, Russia

If you are ever around the Caspian Sea in the South of Russia feel free to drop in on a little village by the name of Archib. You can tell them that I sent you but don’t expect to learn the local lingo easily. There are not many more than 1,000 people who speak this tongue but it has earned its place on the list of the world’s strangest languages. Basically, there is an almost unbelievable number of possible conjugations for each verb. To demonstrate this compared to English we could use the example of the word Type, which we could use to say things like I Have Typed, I am Typing, He Types etc. The Archi tongue, on the other hand, has been calculated as having over a million and a half different possible uses for each verb. Try sitting down with a text book and studying that.

Chalcatongo Mixtec, Mexico

According to some linguistic experts, the weirdest language on Earth is found in Mexico. It is called Chalcatongo Mixtec and is spoken by around 6,000 people. Based on statistical research that was carried out, it is apparently the tongue that bears the least similarities to any other human language. One of the curious things about it is that there is no way of asking a question. What this means is that, “Are You Ok?” and “You Are Ok” sound the same in this language.

Pawnee, USA

The Pawnee language was once widely spoken but it is now counted among the most endangered tongues in the world. This is a shame, as it is, frankly, rather bonkers. There are only 9 consonants and 8 vowels in the alphabet but they still manage to wring an incredible number of long words of more than 30 syllables out of them. Sadly, the current number of native speakers is believed to be in double figures or less.

Sentinelese, Indian Ocean

The reason this language makes it onto the list is because it is possibly the only human tongue which we simply don’t know a single thing about. The Sentinelese people live on North Sentinel Island and no one from the outside world has ever spoken to one of them or heard them speak. Not that attempts haven’t been made. It’s just that they tend to fire arrows and kill people who try to get near to their island. We don’t even know how many of them there are, with estimates starting at 40 and going up to over 500.

Khoisan, Africa

If you have ever listened to an African click language then it might well have been the ancient Khoisan tongue. Many of the remaining speakers of this language live in remote regions of Africa, which means that it hasn’t been very well researched yet. To make things even more complicated, the geographical spread of the language has resulted in very different dialects springing up, some of them with only a handful of speakers who probably couldn’t hold a conversation with someone speaking a different dialect of the same language.

Have you ever come across a stranger language than these?