Update

human_language.md

@@ -34,6 +34,71 @@ This issue is very hard to solve, maybe impossible. It seems that due to the ext
 
 { Yet another, maybe more practical idea would be to create a set of very few core  words -- let's say 100, which we would try to define extremely precisely by all the current imperfect means but with very elevated effort, i.e. each word would have a detailed description, translations to 20 other natural languages, positive and negative examples, pictures attached etc. Then the rest of the language would be defined only using these core words. But maybe it wouldn't work -- the language would be possibly a bit more stable but would eventually degenerate as well. ~drummyfish }
 
+## Existing Languages
+
+*See also [stereotype](stereotype.md).*
+
+UNDER CONSTRUCTION
+
+This section lists some of the most notable human languages. In the brackets there will be additional information about the language such as the number of native speakers, translation of the sentence "What's your name" (in *italics*) or three most common letters/sounds (between [ and ] brackets).
+
+- **Indo-European languages** (~3 B native speakers): Most common language family, originating in Eurasia.
+  - **Germanic languages** (~500 M native speakers): Come from Scandinavia.
+    - **Afrikaans** (~7 M native speakers, *Wat is jou naam?*): Very similar to Dutch and English.
+    - **Danish** (*Hvad er dit navn?*): TODO
+    - **Dutch** (Netherlands, [ena], *Wat is jouw naam?*): Similar to English but with added "grunting" pig sounds.
+    - **[English](english.md)** (~400 M native speakers, [eta], *What's your name?*): Most spoken language in the world (considering also non-native speakers), very simple grammar, no letters with accents, pronounces "r" as if "having a hot potato in mouth", awkward spelling of words, can't say the Spanish "j", is the universal world language of modern age, a must know for everyone.
+      - **Australian**: Very similar to UK.
+      - **Irish**: Most prominent feature is probably pronouncing "th" as "t" or "d", pronounce "r"s.
+      - **New Zealand**: Pronounce certain letters differently, e.g. "pen" sounds like "pin".
+      - **UK**: Sounds soft and arrogant, "r" is often silent.
+      - **[USA](usa.md)**: Harder sound than UK, always pronounces "r" which also sounds very hard, which makes the language easier to understandable, "t" often sounds like "d", speakers open mouth very wide when talking.
+        - south: TODO
+      - ...
+    - **German** (~100 M native speakers, [eni], *Wie heißt du?*): Hard and rough staccato rhythm sound, unpleasant, very long words, identifiable by characteristic rolling "r" and articles like "das", "der" etc.
+    - ...
+  - **Romance languages** (~1 B native speakers): Evolved from Latin, not the hardest to learn.
+    - **French** ([esa], *Comment tu t'appelles?*): Very unique and distinctive [gay](gay.md) sound of French shows to what degree a serious language like Latin can degenerate, especially notable is the soft "r" and phrases like "ooo la la!", duckface when speaking, one the most easily recognizable languages.
+    - **Italian** (~60 M native speakers, [eai], *Come ti chiami?*): Pleasant and melodic, very similar to Latin, sounds like singing, lots of vowels, stresses many times on first syllable. Body language such as waving hands in the air is a big part of speaking Italian correctly, recognizable by iconic phrases such as "spaghetti al dente, mamma mia!".
+    - **Portuguese** (~250 M native speakers, [aeo], *Como te chamas?*): Basically Spanish with funny pronunciation.
+    - **Romanian** ([eia], *Cum vă numiți?*): Sounds similar to Italian.
+    - **Spanish** (~500 M native speakers, [eao], *¿Cómo te llamas?*): Extremely fast, quite pleasant and similar to Italian, has normal and hard "r" (written *rr*), can't pronounce "h" (it's always silent), recognizable by patterns like "El XXXo", "Los XXXos" etc. Described by [Uncyclopedia](uncyclopedia.md) as "essentially Latin for retards", nonetheless spoken all over the world (it's the second most spoken native language) and therefore very useful to learn.
+    - ...
+  - **Slavic languages** (~300 M native speakers): Hard to learn, many grammatic cases, spoken in central/east Europe and north Asia.
+    - **Bulgarian** (*как се казваш, "Kak se kazvash?"*): TODO
+    - **Croatian** ([aio], *Kako se zoveš?*): Kinda similar to Czech/Slovak/Polish, seems to have a lot of "ch" (as in "chicken") sounds.
+    - **[Czech](czechia.md)** ([oea], *Jak se jmenuješ?*): Very similar to Slovak but has a harder sound, contains the infamous "r with an arrow above it" which some consider the hardest sound to pronounce in any language.
+    - **Polish** ([iae], *Jak się nazywasz?*): Similar to Czech/Slovak, has many "sz", "sh", "ch" sounds, stress usually on penultimate syllable.
+    - **Russian** (~150 M native speakers, [oea], *Как тебя зовут?, "Kak tebia zovut?"*): Written in cyrillic, characteristic sounds like "blj", speaking with duckface.
+    - **Slovak** ([aoe], *Ako sa voláš?*): Super similar to Czech (mutually intelligible), sounds much softer and more pleasant, especially e.g. the letter "l".
+    - **Ukrainian** ([oan], *Як тебе звати?, "Jak tebe zvati?"*): Different than Russian but sounds the same.
+    - ...
+  - ...
+- **Other languages**:
+  - **Arabic** (~400 M native speakers, *ما اسمك؟, "Ma ismuka?"*): Sounds fast, weird script written right to left, difficult to learn.
+  - **[Chinese](chinese.md)** (~1 B native speakers, *你贵姓大名?, "Ni quixing daming?"*): Considered the hardest language ever, has many variants and dialects that are even mutually unintelligible (and as such is actually sometimes rather considered a language family), most notably Cantonese and Mandarin, has most native speakers of all languages, has many soft sounds like "shii", "shoo", "chii", plus those "ching chong" sounds along with weird intonation (the language is tonal, meaning pitch changes meaning of words), writing system is a disaster (one character per word).
+  - **[Esperanto](esperanto.md)** (~1 K native speakers, [aie], *Kio estas via nomo?*): Most famous constructed language, even has a few native speakers, sounds similar to Italian.
+  - **Finnish** ([ena], *Mikä sinun nimesi on?*): TODO
+  - **Greek** ([aoi], *Πώς σε λένε?, "Pos se lene?"*): Famously using the weird Greek alphabet, its old version is very historically significant.
+  - **Hebrew** (*מַה שִּׁמְךָ?, "Ma shimkha?"*): TODO
+  - **Hindi** (~350 M native speakers, *तुम्हारा नाम क्या हे, "Tumhaara naam kya he?"*): Sounds quite fast, has that very specific "clicky" pronunciation of certain sounds like "t", "r" and "d", weird script, women talk in high pitch squeeking.
+  - **Hungarian**:  Super gibberish, many "sh" sounds.
+  - **Interslavic**: Constructed language to be understandable by speakers of any Slavic language.
+  - **Japanese** (~100 M native speakers): Very characteristic sound, recognizable by keywords like "desu" and "ka", can't pronounce "l", everything ends with "u", women talk like squeeky toys, brutally difficult writing system (one character per word, but unlike Chinese at least includes scripts for writing words by sillables).
+  - **Klingon** (*nuq 'oH ponglIj'e'?*): Fictional constructed language from Star Trek, in real life spoken mainly by [boomer](boomer.md) [nerds](nerd.md). Learning the language will make you [never get laid](wizard.md).
+  - **Korean** (~80 M native speakers, *이름이 뭐에요?, "Ileum i mwo eyo?"*): Sounds like Japanese but isn't Japanese (can be recognized by lack of "Japanese keywords"), simple writing system, starts to incorporate many English words.
+  - **[Latin](latin.md)** ([eit], *Quid est nomen tibi?*): Officially not spoken anymore but many enthusiasts learn it, [historically](history.md) significant, similar to Italian, everything is written WITH CAPSLOCK, doesn't have the letter "U" (uses "V" instead), characteristic word endings such as "us", "um".
+  - **[Newspeak](newspeak.md)** (*Question [moderated](censored.md) for [privacy](privacy.md) concerns.*): Language from a famous dystopian sci-fi book *[1984](1984.md)*, a version of English formed to serve brainwashing and thought control. At the time of writing the book the language was fictional, [nowadays](21st_century.md) it's already being implemented.
+  - **Sanskrit** (*तव नाम किम्, "Tavva nama kim?"*): TODO
+  - **Swedish** ([ean], *Vad heter du?*): TODO
+  - **[Toki Pona](toki_pona.md)** (*nimi sina li seme?*): New constructed language claiming to be highly [minimalist](minimalism.md), however also looks kind of [SJW](sjw.md).
+  - **Turkish** ([aei], *İsmin ne?*): TODO
+  - **Vietnamese** (~100 M native speakers, *Bạn tên gì?*): Typical Asian "meowing" sound, tonal (pitches distinguish meanings of words).
+  - **Yiddish** (*װי הײסטו, "Vi heystu?"*): TODO
+  - ...
+  
+TODO: average word length, longest word, number of letters in alphabet, ...
+
 ## How To Learn A Foreign Language
 
 WIP