I'm an Australian whose wife is Chinese, we just had our first child, who is German, in Thailand and are thinking to move - after 8+ years in China - to France. Neither of us speak French, but we sometimes translate classical Chinese together. You only get out of languages what you put in to them. Speaking of which, there's a great Arabic calligraphy torrent around at the moment...
I meant "marginal" in an facetious sense. None of these languages are "marginal" to those who grow up speaking them (or who end up meeting a soul mate, of one kind or another, from which they learn them). That's the main point I was trying to make.
I'm an Australian whose wife is Chinese, we just had our first child, who is German, in Thailand and are thinking to move - after 8+ years in China - to France. Neither of us speak French, but we sometimes translate classical Chinese together. You only get out of languages what you put in to them. Speaking of which, there's a great Arabic calligraphy torrent around at the moment...
PS. Pashto's pretty close to Farsi, isn't it? It's not that marginal. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/65/Modernir...