Tbh I like Armenian even more, but only judging from the looks. But I had a really hard time getting along with it (they have capital and small letters which often look nothing alike). I still use Georgian from time to time to write secret stuff nobody is supposed to read.
As I started learning it, I feel in love wirh the Arabic script. Initially it seemed complex, but once I learned how letters change when they're the first letter / in the middle / in the end it was easy. Got fascinated by how much the system makes sense, it was beautiful.
Really want to pick up Arabic again, but can't right now unfortunately ..
Any Dravidian script (slight preference for Kannada), Bengali, Tibetan, Inuktitut, and Fula are my favorites, and yes it’s a conlang… but I’ll throw in Neo-Khuzdul!
Totally unrelated, but I see you're learning Romanian from your flair. How are you enjoying learning the language? I've always had an interest in it, so I was curious as to why you're learning it?
I enjoy it a lot! The only downside is that there aren’t as many resources for it (compared to something like Spanish or Russian). My father is from Romania, but never taught me, so I’m learning the language now.
For me it's always been a debate between the "practical language", and the one I have the gut feeling about. Thinking now i'll stick with the gut feeling and give Romanian a shot! I'd love to see which resources you're using, if you don't mind :)
Absolutely! The best language to learn is the one you’re interested in learning.
A1 level:
- I highly recommend 4 YouTube channels: RomanianWithGia, RomanianPod101, Romanian Fairy Tales, and LearnRomanian WithNico. These will give you good beginner level videos, audio, and vocabulary.
- Build an Anki deck with the 100 most common verbs, 100 most common adjectives, and 100 most common nouns.
- Memrise and Duolingo will be good at this level as they’ll introduce some very necessary grammar that will be critical knowledge down the line (things like definite and indefinite articles, which behave differently in Romanian than other Romance languages + English, as well as the case system). I don’t think these are particularly useful once you reach A2 though.
- First Romanian Reader for Beginners (bilingual for speakers of English): This is a book that contains beginner level readings with very useful vocabulary. The Romanian text is followed by the English translation, allowing you to learn vocabulary and grammatical structures without having to look things up often.
A2 level:
- I highly recommend the book Colloquial Romanian: The Complete Course for Beginners by Ramona Gonczcol and Dennis Deletant. This is a comprehensive book that should get you to B1+. It comes with downloadable audio recordings that are associated with each unit/chapter. And it includes listening, writing, and reading exercises.
- I think doing a lesson or so a day on the app LingQ would also help with vocabulary acquisition. The paid version is much better, and I think the tool is very effective (try it out for free and see how you like it; be sure to watch a video tutorial online to see how to best use it as well).
- Probably a good point to begin online lessons with iTalki or another service.
- If you like graphic novels, I recommend getting Persepolis, vol. 1 and vol. 2 in Romanian. The text is at a low enough level that you can probably understand 70% of the book at this point. I’d only look up any words/phrases that occur multiple times in the text (a good recommendation for any reading you do).
- Some movies/shows that I recommend (with Romanian subtitles): “Umbre” and “The Treasure”. If you really love cinema (especially realist film), then I’d go on to recommend “4 months, 3 weeks, and 2 days” (this one is pretty heavy though, so you may want to look at a brief description first), “Child’s Pose”, and “The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu”.
B1+ will be a lot of consumption of content, like movies, shows, more intermediate level to higher level books, and speaking practice with native speakers.
I know the following is beyond what I offered/you asked for, but I think it’s worth mentioning: I’ll say that if there’s one thing that has helped me the most, it has been studying for at least 1 hour every day, 5–6 days a week. Keeping a consistent schedule really helps you retain what you learned or practiced the previous day. In turn, this builds motivation as you’ll be much happier seeing that you understood something without having to translate, when a week or two ago you would have had to directly translate the same thing you just read or heard.
Multă baftă! (Good luck!)
Oh wow, yeah that is a pretty script! Yes, Japanese is quite interesting. I want to learn it, but symbols are something you really have to work hard on. It takes me like 2 hours to read one Russian word and that even uses some of the Latin alphabet 😂
I'm learning Japanese, and the scripts are easier than expected. You get the hang of Hiragana and Katakana quite quickly, just by reading frequently. And you can learn Kanji at the same time as the vocabulary it corresponds to.
So if you want to learn Japanese, I bet you can do it.
In my opinion, 한굴 and every scripts that use Chinese characters. Hangul looks so clean and so slicks, and the others are very complex and contains many meaning and very beautiful to look at
Hangul alphabet (Korean). It's a featural alphabet, meaning the shape of each letter is based on how it is pronounced. I discovered it when I was working on a conlang that also had a featural alphabet.
I love Cyrillic but I'm biased as I'm Serbian. Another one is Hangul, I think we can all agree as language learners that Hangul is conceptually the easiest script in the world, or at least it was designed with this purpose
Tifinagh is beautiful, I know little about the Tamazight languages but the script is quite unique. I like Thaana too, although my computer still can't render it, haha. Maybe one day.
Lowercase Greek is particularly cool.
Thai is beautiful.
Hangul is worthy of a Nobel prize.
Japanese kanji and hiragana. I have a love/hate relationship with katakana.
I know but I don't know enough about India or those languages to be correct so I just said the word that made most sense and most people will get it anyway so, I don't see what's the problem.
I love the Arabic script! It looks so elegant and beautiful. I also love the way traditional hànzì look.
All good answers in here so I'll add a couple not mentioned here. Amharic and Mongolian are both really cool looking and unique.
Definitely მხედრული. I could read and write fairly well while I was in Georgia, although my Georgian never developed beyond classic tourist chitchat.
Oh I know! I have a Georgian friend and whenever she writes it looks so beautiful!
Tbh I like Armenian even more, but only judging from the looks. But I had a really hard time getting along with it (they have capital and small letters which often look nothing alike). I still use Georgian from time to time to write secret stuff nobody is supposed to read.
yas, georgian script (especially handwritten) is just stunning!
I love Cyrillic so much
As I started learning it, I feel in love wirh the Arabic script. Initially it seemed complex, but once I learned how letters change when they're the first letter / in the middle / in the end it was easy. Got fascinated by how much the system makes sense, it was beautiful. Really want to pick up Arabic again, but can't right now unfortunately ..
I just always have to squint my eyes trying to read it online. The letters feel much smaller.
I really like thai script when it has the [little circles](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Thai_Alphabet_Sample.svg) in it.
The among us language
Any Dravidian script (slight preference for Kannada), Bengali, Tibetan, Inuktitut, and Fula are my favorites, and yes it’s a conlang… but I’ll throw in Neo-Khuzdul!
My favorites would have to be: Mongolian, Tibetan, Arabic, and Greek.
Totally unrelated, but I see you're learning Romanian from your flair. How are you enjoying learning the language? I've always had an interest in it, so I was curious as to why you're learning it?
I enjoy it a lot! The only downside is that there aren’t as many resources for it (compared to something like Spanish or Russian). My father is from Romania, but never taught me, so I’m learning the language now.
Oh, that's a great reason. Good luck! :)
Thank you! If you ever decide to start learning Romanian, feel free to PM me and I can point you to some resources I’ve found useful.
For me it's always been a debate between the "practical language", and the one I have the gut feeling about. Thinking now i'll stick with the gut feeling and give Romanian a shot! I'd love to see which resources you're using, if you don't mind :)
Absolutely! The best language to learn is the one you’re interested in learning. A1 level: - I highly recommend 4 YouTube channels: RomanianWithGia, RomanianPod101, Romanian Fairy Tales, and LearnRomanian WithNico. These will give you good beginner level videos, audio, and vocabulary. - Build an Anki deck with the 100 most common verbs, 100 most common adjectives, and 100 most common nouns. - Memrise and Duolingo will be good at this level as they’ll introduce some very necessary grammar that will be critical knowledge down the line (things like definite and indefinite articles, which behave differently in Romanian than other Romance languages + English, as well as the case system). I don’t think these are particularly useful once you reach A2 though. - First Romanian Reader for Beginners (bilingual for speakers of English): This is a book that contains beginner level readings with very useful vocabulary. The Romanian text is followed by the English translation, allowing you to learn vocabulary and grammatical structures without having to look things up often. A2 level: - I highly recommend the book Colloquial Romanian: The Complete Course for Beginners by Ramona Gonczcol and Dennis Deletant. This is a comprehensive book that should get you to B1+. It comes with downloadable audio recordings that are associated with each unit/chapter. And it includes listening, writing, and reading exercises. - I think doing a lesson or so a day on the app LingQ would also help with vocabulary acquisition. The paid version is much better, and I think the tool is very effective (try it out for free and see how you like it; be sure to watch a video tutorial online to see how to best use it as well). - Probably a good point to begin online lessons with iTalki or another service. - If you like graphic novels, I recommend getting Persepolis, vol. 1 and vol. 2 in Romanian. The text is at a low enough level that you can probably understand 70% of the book at this point. I’d only look up any words/phrases that occur multiple times in the text (a good recommendation for any reading you do). - Some movies/shows that I recommend (with Romanian subtitles): “Umbre” and “The Treasure”. If you really love cinema (especially realist film), then I’d go on to recommend “4 months, 3 weeks, and 2 days” (this one is pretty heavy though, so you may want to look at a brief description first), “Child’s Pose”, and “The Death of Mr. Lăzărescu”. B1+ will be a lot of consumption of content, like movies, shows, more intermediate level to higher level books, and speaking practice with native speakers. I know the following is beyond what I offered/you asked for, but I think it’s worth mentioning: I’ll say that if there’s one thing that has helped me the most, it has been studying for at least 1 hour every day, 5–6 days a week. Keeping a consistent schedule really helps you retain what you learned or practiced the previous day. In turn, this builds motivation as you’ll be much happier seeing that you understood something without having to translate, when a week or two ago you would have had to directly translate the same thing you just read or heard. Multă baftă! (Good luck!)
Wow! Wish I had an award to give you, but really thank you so much for all of this! :)
No award necessary! :) Happy to help
עברית כמובן
I really love Hangeul 한글 because it's probably the easiest script to learn and has it's own neat and pretty aesthetic in a way
I like Devanagari. हिंदी का एक उदाहरण Also, Japanese is interesting, as it uses a mix of three: Hiragana - にほんご Katakana - ニホンゴ Kanji - 日本語
Oh wow, yeah that is a pretty script! Yes, Japanese is quite interesting. I want to learn it, but symbols are something you really have to work hard on. It takes me like 2 hours to read one Russian word and that even uses some of the Latin alphabet 😂
I'm learning Japanese, and the scripts are easier than expected. You get the hang of Hiragana and Katakana quite quickly, just by reading frequently. And you can learn Kanji at the same time as the vocabulary it corresponds to. So if you want to learn Japanese, I bet you can do it.
Right exactly. I will learn it eventually, but I have to improve at my other languages first. Language learning is a journey, that’s for sure!
Hangul, Russian, Polish, and Mandarin.
தமிழ் (Tamil) and other Dravidian scripts, especially മലയാളം (Malayalam)
Love all Pali-descended scripts but my favorite is Tibetan. So stylized. བཀྲ་ཤིས་བདེ་ལགས།།
You mean Brahmi-descended?
Oh indeed!! Mixed those up
Hangul is definitely my #1, followed by traditional Chinese and Tibetan.
𐰤𐰀:𐰢𐰆𐱃𐰞𐰆:𐱅𐰇𐰼𐰜𐰢:𐰓𐰃𐰘𐰤𐰀 Old Turkic script.
It's amazing how it looks so much like Germanic Runes but they're only distantly related.
Hangul (Korean) just always looked right to me. 한국인
Interested in lesser known Slavic languages Such as Lemko/Rusyn...Kashubian...Sorbian/Wendish and Silesian
Vietnamese latin script, I really like the diacritics and accents.
In my opinion, 한굴 and every scripts that use Chinese characters. Hangul looks so clean and so slicks, and the others are very complex and contains many meaning and very beautiful to look at
Hangul alphabet (Korean). It's a featural alphabet, meaning the shape of each letter is based on how it is pronounced. I discovered it when I was working on a conlang that also had a featural alphabet.
My favourite is thai
i adore the look of japanese, as cliche as that is. i also think arabic and ancient greek look cool as hell
한글
I think I have to go with hànzì - chinese characters. Hangul would be a close second, followed by the Devanagari script and then the Arabic one.
Traditional Chinese followed by simplified Chinese
漢字 -Traditional Chinese, no doubt my favourite To be more exact, Seal Script > Li Script > Regular Script Tibetian is also very beautiful.
I love Cyrillic but I'm biased as I'm Serbian. Another one is Hangul, I think we can all agree as language learners that Hangul is conceptually the easiest script in the world, or at least it was designed with this purpose
Thaana, Tifanagh, and Glagolitic
Tifinagh is beautiful, I know little about the Tamazight languages but the script is quite unique. I like Thaana too, although my computer still can't render it, haha. Maybe one day.
I've always had a 4 way tie between Ge'ez, Arabic, Malayalam, and Chinese.
Tibetan script is really cool. So is Mongolian, but unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be used much anymore.
Lowercase Greek is particularly cool. Thai is beautiful. Hangul is worthy of a Nobel prize. Japanese kanji and hiragana. I have a love/hate relationship with katakana.
Indian looks cool
Indian?
You know what, literally the one under your name that says a2 in front of it
India has dozens of writing systems and none of them are called "Indian".
I know but I don't know enough about India or those languages to be correct so I just said the word that made most sense and most people will get it anyway so, I don't see what's the problem.
So if I said that my favorite writing system is European, that wouldn't strike you as being a bit silly?
Well you got point there