Update: Mandarin edges out Fyem

An earlier post mentioned no tense in Mandarin as a bonus for the second language learner. It compared Romance languages and English. Now you can be happy you’re not learning Fyem, which I just came across here:

“Fyem, spoken in Nigeria, has, as well as a past tense, tenses for precisely yesterday and precisely earlier today.”

More verb forms, more second language-learning pain. (Although I’m guessing Fyem doesn’t use characters for a script, so maybe we should call it a tie).

[update Dec 29 2007 -- fixed spelling consistently to "Fyem" even though "Fyam" also appears to be legit]