I think 'weirdness' in this context should not be conflated with 'norm'. Instead, as I read it, I think about it the same way you would think about the regularity of a language (to put it into compsci terms)

I speak both mandarin and cantonese. I think a lot of the 'weirdness' factor comes from actually saying the words. Also there are some words in cantonese that are not in mandarin. For example, in Cantonese, there is 'mou' (the negation of having), while in Mandarin, it'd be pronounced as two words ('mei2 you3). Spoken cantonese in some regards, is easier to pick up than spoken mandarin (definitely easier to cuss in)

If Mandarin-speakers say "meiyou" quickly, it sounds like "mou". If English-speakers say "going to" quickly, it sounds like "gonna".

I wouldn't say all English speakers - someone saying "gonna" sounds distinctly American to me. Around here, something like "gonnae" (which sounds more different than the small difference in spelling would suggest), common usage:

"Gonnae no' dae that?"

As I understand it dialects which somehow qualify as language are weighted more than English and all it's dialects? Definitions of languages tend to be quite arbitrary or even politically motivated at times; look no further than the Balkans or Moldovan [1].

"a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot" [2]

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldovan_language#Controversy [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an...

Yes, as for the Balkans, some would argue that Croatian, Serbian and Bosnian are all just dialects of the same basic language.

a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot

(A language is a dialect with an army and navy)

-- Max Weinreich

What do you mean by Moldovan?

Moldovan is almost the same as Romanian, but written with the Cyrillic instead of the Latin alphabet.

This ceased to be when Moldova declared its independence, in early nineties, reverting the official language to the Latin alphabet.

Saying that Moldavian is a dialect of Romanian is sort of an overstatement, because besides a couple of regional words and phrases imported from Russian, it's the same as literary Romanian in writing and when spoken we have the same accent used in the region of Romania that borders Moldova (and that's bigger than Moldova itself, we even call that region Moldova and when we refer to Moldova, the country, we're calling it Basarabia).

Romanians are also the largest population group living in Moldova. This country is basically a part of Romania that was taken from us. Unfortunately they don't want to unite with us, because many Romanians there forgot that they are Romanians or consider themselves to be Moldovans. We also help them whenever we can and we also represent their door to EU, since obtaining Romanian citizenship is easy for Moldovans. Unfortunately having them close to our hearts went without returned favours. But whatever, if they want to be Moldavian-speaking Moldovans, living in Moldova, to each his own.

I think this is the exactly what he meant with regards to language definition being arbitrary and often politicized.

Oh, I realized that. I was just giving context.

> Meanwhile I see Hungarian, famous for being the hardest language to learn

Source? It's hard to determine which language is hardest to learn since it all depends on what languages you already speak.

People who are familiar with Finnish and Estonian probably won't find Hungarian too hard, because the three languages are related.

Another example: Is English hard to learn? Probably not if your native language is a Germanic one (such as Dutch), but if your native language is Japanese, English might be a serious challenge.

As a Finn, I have to point out that just because Finnish and Hungarian are related, it doesn't mean it is easy to learn, or in any way "not weird" to us. Some basic things about the grammar are the same, but you wouldn't be able to tell that they're related without a higher degree in linguistics. I think Hungarian is usually considered very difficult to learn precisely because it doesn't resemble any other language. Nothing you know already will make it (noticeably) easier to learn.

Seems like they are just counting the weird features of languages. It is correct that language like Turkish (probably Hungarian as well) is least weird because it does not have any of the weird features like word gender, irregular verbs, prefixes etc. But two main features of language, extreme inflection and vowel harmony makes learning it difficult.

I suspect that Turkish scores low on the weird score as it was reformed in the 20th century. Prior to it's reformation it was a language mostly only spoken and occasionally shoehorned into a more ornate language's arabic script (called Osmanci - pronounced Oss-mann-juh).

Turkish was the language the lower and middle Turkish classes typically used during the Ottoman period. When the language reforms came in not long after the establishment of the modern Turkish republic, they were specifically designed with the idea of unifying the people by language and being easy to learn to read and write, which is how Turkey went from a literacy rate of 30% to 70% in just a few years.

Turkish is weird to a western european, but once you get past the initial weirdness is probably the most regular and structured language you'll ever learn. Which you'll find exceptionally weird if you've ever tried to queue for a ferry ticket in Turkey (which is not regular or structured at all).