What's the most exotic language you speak or have studied?

Actually, I can't speak for Korean, but Japanese has anything from two to four tones, depending on the dialect... You just don't necessarily have to use them to be understood.

Rounin, that's the difference between a tone language and pitch-accent....

Tones are lexical; every word has them and the meaning changes if you don't use them.

Some pitch in Japanese is lexical (HA-shi vs. ha-SHI, etc.), but plays a very small role in the language. What is more important is the phrasal pitch, or intonation; ie. how to move from one word to the next.

Korean apparently works the same way, though I don't know as much about it.

By the way, what dialecct in Japanese has 4 pitches? I had no idea!

Icelandic interest me a lot too. My cousin, a Uni lecturer, decided to move there some time ago. It's a wonderful country, but its language has so many alien concepts, even the most set-blood polyglots seem to find it hard.

The Italian dialects are the things that make me splutter... although the weirdest for change is Welsh; a tiny country, but three ways of conjugating a verb depending on where one is.

Iceland's also cool because they won the 1991 world bridge championship (The Bermuda Bowl, in Yokohama that year); as far as I know, the only world championship they've ever held!

Dunno much about the language, except it's at least Germanic, so lots of the vocabulary is familiar (more so for speakers of Swedish, etc. than for heavily romance-influenced English)...

The Lord's Prayer in Icelandic:

Faðir vor, þú sem er á himnum.
Helgist þitt nafn, til komi þitt ríki,
verði þinn vilji, svo á jörðu sem á himni.
Gef oss í dag vort daglegt brauð.
Fyrirgef oss vorar skuldir,
svo sem vér og fyrirgefum
vorum skuldunautum.
Og eigi leið þú oss í freistni,
heldur frelsa oss frá illu.
[Því að þitt er ríkið, mátturinn og dýrðin
að eilífu amen.]

Hiya! Who says Icelandic is exotic?

It's certainly Germanic, and a member of the Nordic language family.
The main difference is our complicated grammar.
This link on Icelandic grammar is good for English speakers:

http://www.samkoma.com/mimir/mimir.htm

Thanks for the link, Læknir! I am thinking of visiting my cousin up in Iceland, and I want to be able to converse with people... luckilly, I'm not going for another seven or eight months, bearing in mind the grammar!

I think one of the hardest things is the purification of the language, using Viking-age words rather than borrowing; that could be enjoyable, too.

Dròm, I think you'll find that virtually every Icelander speaks English!

Latvian was my first language. Didn't start learning English until around the age of seven or eight and still didn't know much English when we came to the USA when I was 11. Have managed to pick up some English since then and am now on contract with the US Dept. of State as a Latvian interpreter. Part-time work.

Other than that, I've been picking up some Hawaiian on visits to that beautiful archipelago. I think I know exactly five words (or phrases) in Japanese. Same number of words in Arabic.

Nothing exotic about German, French or Spanish, all of which I speak like an American tourist.

Agh, but I always find it essential to learn the language, even if everyone speaks a language that I already know. Nevertheless, my effort on languages outside of study is concentrated on learning Hungarian!

Are there many Latvian émigrés in the US? Are you often called to interpret?
Do many people still speak Hawaiian in Hawaii? Is it taught in schools?

I agree totally, am studying german and whilst it is interesting, it sure as hell isn't exotic.
But this thread is about exotic languages so i will subsequently be leaving...

Latvian emigrees are spread out all over the Western world. The USA has a large percentage of this group which fled Latvia during WW II and their descendants. Australia and Canada ditto. But that's not for whom I interpret. Since Latvia regained independence in 1991, there has been a lively traffic of US government-sponsored visitors here. It is for them that I interpret and act as escort on behalf of the US State Dept.

Hawaiian is taught in schools in Hawaii as an elective. Most of the people who take the courses are haoles (white 'foreigners'). The native Hawaiians don't need the instruction. In addition to standard Hawaiian, there also exists a Hawaiian pidgin which is probably more common in some rural areas than standard Hawaiian. Like all pidgins, it has quite formal rules of grammar.

This is how Matthew 1:1 reads in Hawaiian Pidgin:

Dis book tell bout Jesus and his ancesta guys. He da Christ, da Spesho Guy God Wen Send. He from King David ohana, an David, he from Abraham ohana.

Kansaiben ya de.

It might have been an exhaggeration on the part of whoever said it first though

exotic languages are the coolest
Hmm... What makes a language exotic? I speak natively a language which doesn't have much relative languages, but it has a bit over 5 million speakers worldwide. It's Finnish, of course spoken in Finland. Does it count if I can understand an exotic language? I can understand a bit Inkeroinen and Carelian And Estonian.
In addition, I study Japanese which is sometimes (rarely) amusingly similar to Finnish. Here's an example: there's this Japanese word 'iie'. The word with same meaning in Finnish is 'ei'. That's 'no' in English. And for that I know how to make English-speakers say no in Finnish, I'll teach you. Just say the vowel 'a'. Finnish pronunciation is somehow very hard for foreigners, and they are too amused by our words, which might contain several same letters behind each other. I was studying also Klingon, but can't remember anything but a few words in it. Another Star Trek languge is Vulcan, and I know one sentence in it: "tich tor ang tesmur" being the well known "live long and prosper"...
As there has been discussion about Icelandic, I want to say my view on this: being able to speak Swedish, Icelandic sounds similar, and as I read the Icelandic lord's prayer posted by mezzie, I was happy to realize that I could translate most words to Swedish, thinking about how the Finnish one goes. For someone who's interested, here's Lord's prayer in Finnish:

Isä Meidän, joka olet taivaissa.
Pyhitetty olkoon sinun nimesi.
Tulkoon sinun valtakuntasi.
Tapahtukoon sinun tahtosi,
myös maan päällä
niin kuin taivaassa.
Anne meille tänä päivänä
jokapäiväinen leipämme.
Ja anna meille velkamme anteeksi,
niin kuin mekin annamme anteeksi
niille, jotka ovat meitä vastaan rikkoneet.
Äläkä saata meitä kiusaukseen,
vaan päästä meidät pahasta.
Sillä sinun on valtakunta, ja voima,
ja kunnia. Iankaikkisesti aamen.

I find it amusing that Finnish is a language, where there's no such thing as 'the longest word' -- you can always add some suffix or prefix to the word to make it longer; I'll form one for you: ylihuomennakinköhän.
Well, wasn't that long, but note that I just made it up. Once a finlandsswedish girl said to me how she wondered how any finn can invent a new word, and then say it to any other finn, and he'll be understood. As I realized that that's not so common, I felt special.

Well, that's more than enough about Finnish, and me.
So long.

Kiitos ja näkemiin.

Welcome to A2K, ikava. I never realized that Finnish pronunciation was considered hard. I don't speak Finnish but when I see something written in that language, I find it easy to mouth the words. It's very phonetic, after all, and all you have to remember is to pronounce all the letters and put the stress on the first syllable.

Most exotic I've studied is maybe...Chechen.

I'd recommend it to anyone looking for a language that will baffle those who are trying to identify it!

Lol, I just pasted the same message twice...

Thai-Karen.
It's almost all Greek to me.

Hebrew...I'm going to take the Hebrew regents on Tuesday (im in 7th grade)

I read Biblical Hebrew, if you can call that exotic! Otherwise, just learning French, Spanish and German...

As to the original question: Dutch gnagnagna. Dutch is difficult, I warn you!

Classical Mayan, only the writing...
Yucateco for speaking, they say it is one of the closest to the original, spoken by the Mayans.

The constructed languages toki pona, it is all good..

And what can be more exotic than Klingon?

Qapla'!