I can't make any sense of that Eastern Nagari script. I was briefly considering Bengali (it has a lot of speakers) but I dislike the writing system, plus the Bengal region doesn't interest me nearly as much as northern India.
Do you have a particular interest in Sri Lanka or Nepal?

I'm not sure about Assamese, but I've read it has happened. I can, however, personally attest to it happening in Sylheti.



This is when, normally, my nationalistic pride would swell up and I would use the angry emoticon at you. However, I don't do that.

That's nice of you. Seriously, I appreciate it.

I suppose this nationalistic pride is the reason why Bengali continues to be written in its own script along with its own orthographic peculiarities, instead of Devanagari (and the same for many other Indic languages).

The whole of South Asia in intriguing to me, especially India, Nepal & Sri Lanka. Now that the Sri Lankan Civil War is finally over, hopefully that nation can start to develop better.


I get the feeling that you would like for all the Indo-Aryan languages to use Devanagari. But I like all the different abugidas.

Me too, but particularly India. It's the largest and the most influential country in the region, economically, politically and culturally

As far as Sri Lanka goes, I would probably choose Tamil over Sinhalese. It has more native speakers overall and there are many Tamil Canadians.
Well, I like Devanagari, and it would be convenient. But I realize the importance of linguistic diversity in India.

Well, unless you're in the Northern Province of Sri Lanka you're better off knowing Sinhala or English to communicate.
But, yeah, I understand why Tamil seems like a better choice. I was interested in the Dravidian languages, particularly Telugu & Tamil, because they seem so cool "on paper". But, after listening to dialogue in both languages, I've decided that I don't like the sound of them at all. Whereas I actually like the sound of Sinhala & many other Indo-Aryan languages (especially Nepali!)

Well, the sound of a language isn't that influential of a factor to me. I like the sound of Finnish, but I'm not interested in learning it. By contrast I don't really like the sound of Chinese but I'm very committed to learning it.

For me, I have to like the sound of a language in order to learn it, otherwise I just won't want to study it. That's why I'm not going to learn Mandarin. I used to think that "I might as well learn it" because it's so useful and since I already know some 3,000 sinographs thanks to kanji & hanja. But, I just don't like the sound of Mandarin. Cantonese is OK, but I really don't like Mandarin. So, I'm not going to learn it: I'll probably learn Sinhala instead.

Argh, really? Cantonese is one of my least favourite languages as far as sound goes. And let's not get started on those nine different tones! At least it's written in traditional characters though.

On a related note, do you really know 3000 characters? I didn't think either Japanese or Korean used that many. How did you learn them/how fluent are you in either of these languages?

(As an aside, one deal-breaker for me is when a language has a writing system I really dislike; ie. it's hard to learn, doesn't suit the language well or just looks ugly. That's a major factor in dissuading me from learning Japanese, which we have discussed before. It's a shame because I really like the sound of the language.)

9? Nah, there are really only 6. The other 3 found in closed syllables are not distinct from the 1st, 3rd & 6th tones found in open syllables.
Taiwan still officially uses traditional characters.


Japanese are taught a total of 2,928 characters throughout primary & secondary school. I've learned all of those plus at least another 100 other uncommon & rare characters.
I learned them by using a spaced repetition software (SRS) called Anki. The program already comes preloaded with a "deck" of kanji with their meanings. All I had to do was add more kanji to the deck & create mnemonic stories to remember each character.
I'm not fluent in either Japanese or Korean; I consider myself an intermediate in both.