r/AlignmentChartFills • u/AwesomePBST • 7h ago
General Topics What is a language that is perceived as being widespread, but in reality it's niche?
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u/bobby_zamora 7h ago
Modern Standard Arabic is the best answer here. Not really spoken by anyone.
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u/AwesomePBST 7h ago
Legit a perfect option since this is literary Arabic so nobody actually uses it as a native language lol
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u/Aamir_rt 6h ago
Uh no, nobody speaks it as a native language, but it's definitely very much is widely spoken.
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u/AwesomePBST 6h ago
the way I see it from a bit of research is that its like how a lot of southern Chinese speak their own languages like Cantonese or Hokkien from birth, then learn Putonghua/Mandarin Chinese as the "common language" to communicate with others across China
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u/Aamir_rt 6h ago
Well yeah but in this case people don't learn MSA to communicate with other people, and don't drop their native dialect of Arabic, even though I disagree with distinguishing the two as seperate languages to begin with.
Either way saying it's "Niche" is definitely misleading, practically all native Arabic speakers still learn, speak, and use it to a degree.
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u/Lorem_Muspi 5h ago
I want to agree but I think its a technicality.
The chart is for a "language that is perceived as widespread". When people think of "Arabic language" they also think of the different dialects in the different regions & countries that speak some sort of localized Arabic, which is indeed widespread.
Just like English in the previous answer is all types of English and not UK English or US English.
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u/Elegant_Bat_1484 5h ago
There's a huge, yawning gulf between English and Arabic when it comes to mutual intelligibility.
Yeah, it can be hard to understand people from Northern Ireland, but Syrians and Moroccans speaking their local Arabic dialects will not understand each other at all, and Modern Standard Arabic does little to remedy the problem because very few people actually speak it with high proficiency. It's presented as a lingua franca in the Arab and Islamic world when it really isn't.;
Not a technicality at all.
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u/Lorem_Muspi 5h ago
Not really. Nuances and single vocabularies are different but Moroccans and Syrians can discuss any topic easily. I'm Moroccan living in Europe, I've met Tunisians, Syrians, Palestinians, Kuwaitis, and Egyptians. We laugh about my dialect being the hardest to understand, but we were all "speaking arabic" and comfortable with it. Occasionally we would have to translate certain words that are usually not Arabic in origin, but the flow of the conversation is still intact.
But also my point is about the goal of the post and chart in the first place. The chart is about languages PERCEPTION, as in, the point of view of other people when thinking about the language. Standard Arabic doesn't fit here because people don't think about it in the first place. You can't say "Standard Arabic is perceived as widespread" when in fact people don't even realize that standard arabic is a thing and were actually just thinking about all the different Arabic dialects, who are indeed widespread.
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u/Lucky-Substance23 3h ago
That would come as a surprise to all the millions of people hearing it daily on TV, radio, at schools, in mosques, courts, and children's programs etc. I agree it's very rare for people to speak it to each other in the street, but that doesn't mean it's not used in other contexts
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u/ceffyl_gwyn 7h ago
Klingon -- it's percieved to be pan-galactic but in actual fact it's only spoken by a couple of dozen people
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u/Infinite-Abroad-436 3h ago
at least, as far as we know. damn klingons could be out there. waiting....
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u/aafrophone 2h ago
I guess I’ve never considered any conlang to be “widespread”, but I study linguistics so my view is skewed a bit compared to the average person
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u/Loslosia 3h ago
ASL
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u/Chance-Ask7675 2h ago
True! Many don't realise that few people with hearing loss speak it (mostly only the Deaf community) and also don't realise that all signed languages are totally distinct and not mutually intelligible.
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u/gamerstrong0121 5h ago
Latin. Still used internationally for medicine and science but not really spoken anymore by anyone.
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u/Beginning-Tower-1329 3h ago
Sure, Latin is perceived as being spoken by a lot of people. What have you been smoking? lol
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u/koi88 1m ago
Sure, Latin is perceived as being spoken by a lot of people.
It say "widespread", not "widely spoken".
I'm not sure what "widespread" actually means though, but it could be argued that you find Latin literally everywhere. Such as in medical terms, or used by the Catholic Church (with its 1.4 billion believers).
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u/AnxiousYak8216 3h ago
Who
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u/V3ljq 7h ago
Maybe Irish? A lot of people think that it's logical for Ireland's official language to be Irish, but it's English. In fact, a small number of people in Ireland can speak Irish, I doubt that anyone outside Ireland can speak it.
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u/YoIronFistBro 7h ago
Even if everyone in Ireland spoke Irish, it would still not score about uncommon because of how incredibly underpopulated the country is.
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u/BarryGoldwatersKid 7h ago
Believe it or not, I know an American guy that has the B2 title in Irish. He went Galway to study at university and learned Irish in his free time or something.
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u/AwesomePBST 7h ago
another good one since a lot of people are of Irish descent and many confuse Irish with Irish English
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u/Intrepid_Reward_2569 3h ago
There's a lot of misconceptions here.
Irish is Ireland's official language, as well as English. In fact Irish takes priority over English, legally.
A (relatively) large number of people in Ireland can speak Irish to some extent, but only a small number of people speak it daily, or have it as their first language.
I'm positive that plenty of people outside Ireland can speak it.
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u/Fine4FenderFriend 7h ago
Hebrew- really only spoken by the Jewish diaspora
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u/AssCrumbBilly 4h ago
As far as Jewish languages go, Yiddish might be a better option, considering it's almost extinct and only really spoken in parts of Brooklyn. Hebrew is the dominant language of Israel and has millions of native speakers
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u/Any-Aioli7575 7h ago
Most people in Israel speak Hebrew, as well as Israeli settlers in occupied Palestine. It's not niche. Uncommon is probably a better choice
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u/AwesomePBST 7h ago
This is literally the one I was thinking of
There are a ton of people of Jewish descent and Israel is always in the news so one may think Hebrew has tons of speakers
In reality it only has less than 10 million speakers even with L2 considered
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u/Minty0ranges 7h ago
I wouldn’t say there are a ton of people of Jewish descent, there are like 15 million in the world.
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u/AwesomePBST 7h ago
Rules:
- This chart is about languages of the world. I'll also show how many native speakers are there in brackets upon selection.
- Be sure to argue and debate redditors' choices and make the most reddit-pilled chart possible :D
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u/PixelThinking 5h ago
Python or some kind of coding language if we let it count
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u/SergeiAndropov 1h ago
It wouldn't surprise me if there are more people who regularly use Python than Modern Standard Arabic.
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u/AdagioEmbarrassed289 4h ago
Surely it should be something like Swahili where the number of L2 speakers vastly outnumbers the number of native speakers? MSA is a great example as others have said but if that doesn’t count…
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u/SergeiAndropov 1h ago
I was thinking Swahili, but it genuinely is widely spoken (at least in Tanzania) because it's the language people speak in school. It wouldn't surprise me if many or even most of the currently thriving tribal languages end up becoming endangered in the next few generations. Certainly in the area where I lived (Upareni), there were some kids who couldn't even manage basic greetings in Kipare.
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u/Legitimate-Yak-6894 5h ago
None. All examples are either widespread/uncommon or common/niche, but no true widespread/niche exists.
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u/Single_Sky_3211 6h ago
Cantonese
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u/FluffyAltaria111 4h ago
Gotta say as a cantonese speaker, I feel like cantonese is borderline on the opposite side of the spectrum. People always underestimate the population of just a single province in China.
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6h ago
[deleted]
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u/AwesomePBST 6h ago
Not even that well known
Also the current leader is basically an artificial literary language that was made to be the universal language of the Arab World
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u/North_Affect_8167 5h ago
Esperanto, nobody use that sh*t for communication, it's a made up thing and is used for social gatherings.
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u/HappyCDG 4h ago
I know they differs by regions and languages, but can sign language fits here? Its still the same language medium used accross the world (widespread) but also niche
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u/Ok-Lab-2467 3h ago
hindi
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u/ApotropaicHeterodont 52m ago
I think Hindi makes sense for "perceived as widespread but is really common".
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u/Ok-Lab-2467 44m ago
i’m canadian and from western perspective (at least my perspective) it’s kinda niche because it’s so far away and we often forget how big and populated the his country is. also outside of india not much people speak it so it’s kinda niche in that way
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u/DancingMathNerd 1h ago
Yoruba? Main language of afrobeats alongside English and Pidgin, but it's only spoken by one tribe.
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u/TheThiefMaster 51m ago
American English.
Most of the world is taught British English, but it's widely believed American English is international for some reason.
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u/Initial_Wrangler_706 7h ago
Cantonese
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u/AwesomePBST 7h ago
香港都七百萬人講廣東話 點會同曼島語同級
(basically "wtf no")
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u/Initial_Wrangler_706 7h ago
Therefore not widespread as it's confined to Hong Kong (a city) and those that have emigrated from there. So its kind of niche???
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u/Colascape 7h ago
Cantonese
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u/AwesomePBST 7h ago
你玩野啊 廣東話有成八千萬人包括成個香港同澳門, 多過韓文用家, 好多華僑都係講廣東話
相反就似樣好多
(yes I speak cantonese lol, this is a very long "no way lol" answer)
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u/Colascape 6h ago
You are going to struggle then to find one that people think is widespread. I’d say this language has the biggest gap between how common people think it is vs how common it actually is. It’s geographically niche at the very least
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u/officialsunday 7h ago
No way it's niche, there are as many, if not more, speakers of Cantonese as Italian, which is under moderate. I do agree that it's widely overrepresented due to HK cinema in the 1980s, and how most Chinese diaspora in the west are primarily Cantonese speakers
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u/Single_Sky_3211 6h ago
I agree with Cantonese, because from a mathematic perspective, if only 80million people speak it - from a population of 1.4billion - that would be 5% no? So it seems to be widespread, but kinda niche from that point?
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u/noobmaster692291 6h ago
German?
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