The most widely spoken languages in the world

[Johann]

Mango Languages has some lessons in endangered languages available for free, including several Native American/First Nations languages. Unfortunately, not any Iroquois languages. But you can learn a little Cherokee or something else if you want.

Cherokee is an Iroquoian language. I knew it was related to Mohawk, when I first saw it. And the pronunciation is similar in spots. "R' and "L" are kind of intermixed in both. And in Mohawk, written "k" is often softened to "g" when spoken. The Cherokee word for their own language and people is "Tsalagi" in English spelling. That one word shows similar use of both devices in Mohawk and Cherokee.

From Google: "Cherokee is part of the Iroquoian language family. Today, the Iroquois are a group of six tribes living in the Great Lakes region of the United States and Canada. Linguists say that at some time, around 3,500 years ago, the Cherokee people lived there as well.

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You can't just "merge" two languages together. Languages don't work like that. Once you do that, neither language would be the same language any more.

Modern English is largely Germanic-Swedish/Norwegian with French loanwords. But English speakers cannot understand Norwegian, Swedish, or French without extensive study. Old English died out hundreds of years ago and we cannot understand it today. (There are people who can, of course, but the average Modern English speaker cannot do so without extensive study.) I wouldn't consider it "saved" any more than I'd consider a Ford F150 to be the same as a wrecked Chevy Silverado simply because I transferred the radio and air freshener from the Chevy to the Ford.

Well, at least PART of Anglo-Saxon is still understandable. We got all our four-letter swear-words from it and most are pretty well unaltered, I note. 

Really - as you say, it's not very understandable today, at least, without study. I took some free lessons on the web a few years ago and it was fascinating. And if you know Modern German, that'll give you a leap forward in learning vocabulary. It's obvious that in so many cases. the old Germanic roots of both are the same.

I should learn it properly. My DNA is about as Anglo-Saxon as it's possible to get. Pretty well all, from my birth-mother, and mainly the same from my birth father, plus little smidges from nearby - Ireland, Wales - and Invaders - Norway, Denmark, Sweden, France. I was adopted (found out at 47) and didn't start investigating my roots until I was over 70.