I was reading an article about countries that are the least vulnerable to natural disasters (Estonia, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Andorra), and then continued to check out the comments when I stumbled on this beautifully written, cheeky message about the spoken languages in those countries, and I must say, I fell in love with the writing, and also want to move to Andorra. Here is the comment:
“While I’m sure Estonia is a very nice and fun country with lots of beautiful, talented, big-hearted people who know how to have a good time and (when it’s appropriate!) laugh real hard…
I would nonetheless like to point out that the ESTONIAN LANGUAGE is one of humanity’s “nightmare languages” and — trust me on this one — there’s a very, very good chance that you could get hypertension or clinical depression and maybe even shave precious years off your already all-too-brief lifespan if you were just to sit down and try to learn ESTONIAN GRAMMAR.
I’m sure that right now some of you are rolling your eyes in disgusted disbelief and are saying, “Geepers, Hugo! You can’t be serious!”
But there’s simply no denying the horrifying fact that, while Estonian nouns have no gender, Estonian nouns and adjectives decline in FOURTEEN CASES, including such howlers as the so-called “illative” and “abessive” cases. Wow!! Scary!!
Estonian is NOT a cozy, cute, easy-going language such as Indonesian or Swahili, which, in comparison, are gleeful hayrides of joyous simplicity and relaxation.
So, if you are a worrywart and can’t sleep at night because you are afraid of tsunamis and tornados and/or locusts, then you should probably move immediately to Estonia and spend the rest of your life learning to decline nouns and adjectives in FOURTEEN CASES and tearing out your hair and weeping in bitter frustration.
Also, as far as Qatar, Bahrain, and the UAE, are concerned, Arabic is no delirious cakewalk, either.
So, after the fat lady has sung, it looks like Andorra is probably your best bet safety-wise and also in terms of relatively anguish-free language acquisition because learning Catalan is basically a two-for-one deal or, if you’re very clever, even a three-for-one deal because if you learn Catalan you can quickly and effortlessly learn Castilian and French and, with extra-special bonus effort, maybe even Portuguese and/or Italian. So, it could even turn out to be a four-for-one deal if you are a hard worker with a decent memory and can roll your r’s and make lots of tricky vowel sounds like the ones you encounter all the time in French. (But you can just forget Romanian, because it’s a whole other ball of wax that has lots and lots of grammar. But the pronunciation isn’t very hard. But still. Also, lots of Slavic loanwords that you probably won’t recognize. Also, some words of Turkish origin, which you also probably won’t recognize. Although Turkish, compared to Estonian, is a total breeze.)”
