Celtic music is very popular indeed - I know a few establishments where I can hear it any time I want. But these people don't actually know any of the languages for the most part.
I know all the words to "Tunak Tunak Tun" but nobody learns Punjabi.

The vast majority don't, no. Most Beethoven fans don't end up studying German either. But if even one in a hundred gives it a go, do you have any idea what that adds up to?


Au contraire! I taught myself Punjabi in order to decipher the songs of Gurdas Maan, among others. I know Americans who are studying Hindi, and it has nothing to do with how many people you can talk to in it. The reason you run into more learners of Celtic languages than Indic ones is that Celtic music has been big in the States since the Clancy Brothers whereas "Jai Ho" was most Americans' first exposure to an Indian-style pop song.

Hindi and Punjabi are entirely different orders of magnitude - Hindi has been taught in Western universities for a long time, whereas I've never seen Punjabi offered. How difficult was it to find materials on it?

I'm surprised to hear that. I knew Sanskrit had a long history of instruction in the West, but I thought the study of Hindi was quite recent (as is, indeed, the standardisation of the language itself). There have been Punjabi-speakers in Californian for a century or more and both San Jose State and UC Berkeley offer programmes in the language.

Locally:
http://www.asia.ubc.ca/undergraduate/co ... njabi.html

How does my school not have Punjabi despite being in a city where it's the fourth-most spoken language?
Even so, I don't think the Punjab, with its rich cultural tradition, can compete with the Hindi institution of Bollywood.

I no longer understand what point you're trying to make any more.

I'm willing to assume far more people study Hindi than Punjabi because it's more pervasive, of course.

Haha, sorry I haven't been able to get on for a few days.

@ Linguoboy: I had to look up the phrases I've learned, I don't know how to spell Irish very well. Tá mé go maith, agus tú féin?

Haha, yes, people who learn languages for fun are freaks! But we're the good kind, right?

My personal language for learning Irish is because it's my heritage. Plus it's a difficult language, and nothing else was really challenging me. Once you get past Cyrillic, Russian ain't all the hard.

My own little linguistic statistic to add to the information swirling around about languages: The largest community of Turkish speakers outside of Turkey is located in Germany. Lol.

That's what I've always said! Russian gender is as "easy" to figure out as Spanish or Italian, and it your wrong, the declensions aren't that different from each other.
he sleeps on the bed
Он спит на красной кровати. (on spit na krasnoy kravati) (feminine)
but if I guess wrong and pick masculine instead, we get
Он спит на красном кроватом. (OK...forget that example )