Name the language
Here is a recording of a mystery language. Can you work out which one if is?
This is not a language you’re likely to hear very often.
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TJ on 26 May 2007 at 12:04 pm #
it sounds like my hungarian teacher!
so I would make a guess and say hungarian or finnish …………… or a related lang!
lee954 on 26 May 2007 at 2:25 pm #
Although I’ve never heard it spoken before; I’d guess and say it’s Lapp (Sami).
Halabund on 26 May 2007 at 3:28 pm #
Doesn’t sound finno-ugric to my ears … or at least it doesn’t have vowel harmony.
Halabund on 26 May 2007 at 4:07 pm #
If it *is* Finno-Ugric (I still have my doubts), then it might be Estonian.
Colm on 26 May 2007 at 5:19 pm #
It’s definetely not Estonian. That I can tell you.
I would say it is Quenya, the High Eleven language created by J. R. R. Tolkien for Middle Earth.
pittmirg on 26 May 2007 at 7:05 pm #
I’m not surprised that this language isn’t heard very often:
‘A laita te’ - it’s Tolkien’s Quenya
TJ on 26 May 2007 at 8:37 pm #
Quenya? hmmmmm ……… Tolkien was finnish right??
so does that make me right? ^_^
Colm on 26 May 2007 at 9:26 pm #
Tolkien was an English man and was a professor of Ango-Saxon (Old English). He created Middle Earth to give his made up languages a home.
He created Quenya (High Elven; Quenya was to the Elves what Latin was to the Europeans) which was (loosely) based on Finnish. He also created Sindarin (Grey Elven) which was the evryday language of the Elves and it was (loosely) based on Welsh. I am not sure of Tolkien could ever spoke Finnish and Welsh and if he could to what degree but I do know he spoke Icelandic and could read the old Norse myths and tales in the their original language.
renato figueiredo on 26 May 2007 at 10:55 pm #
Dear Simon, I would like to suggest you that if it is possible, in mistery languages you put languages of same family, when it is possible, as you did with Scandinavian languages ( Danish, Swedish, Norwegian) in that case I felt the absence of Icelandic and Faroes together. In today’s mistery. It is a fino-ugric language. It wuld be more interesting if it had Finnish, Hungarian, Estonian and other languages. I think this give us a motion of the difference of those languages. I could see this in Scandinavian languages, where Danish is closer as British English and Portuguese from Portugal, and Norwegian is opener as American English and Brazilian Portuguese.
I will agree with TJ.
TJ on 27 May 2007 at 12:12 am #
Colm: thanks for the info!
Dunno where I read that …… but I guess i saw some where that he was finnish!
thanks again! ^_^
Matthew on 27 May 2007 at 4:27 am #
I think it would be either Faroese or Icelandic. My gut feeling is telling me it’s Faroese. To me, it doesn’t really sound Finno-Ugric, but then again, I haven’t really looked into Finno-Ugric languages apart from Finnish.
Mike on 27 May 2007 at 4:43 am #
Definitely Quenya, specifically a passage called “The Ringbearer’s Praise”. I know because I’ve had the site the audio file came from bookmarked for a couple months. :D
http://www.ellammath.de/praisee.htm
Colm on 27 May 2007 at 10:58 am #
@renato figueiredo: The mystery language this time was Quenya. It’s an Elven language from Middle Earth created by Tolkien (the man who wrote Lord of the Rings, the Hobbit and other books). Whilst Tolkien got his inspiration for Quenya from Finnish (with some grammar elements from Latin and some phonology elements from Spanish and Italian), it is a made-up language, and so not derived from Proto-(Finno-)Ugric and therefore can not be considered part of the Finno-Ugric family.
Otherwise it would be like saying Esperanto is a Romance language with some English, Germanic and Slavic influences. Constructured languages and IALs need to be kept seperate from the natural language they are based on.
@TJ: No problem! :-) I am a LOtRs fan and I am also learning Estonian and Finnish so I was sort of at a big advantage for this mystery language.
Colm on 27 May 2007 at 11:01 am #
Thanks Mike for the link :-)
Simon on 27 May 2007 at 11:49 am #
The answer is indeed Quenya, one of the languages invented by J.R.R. Tolkien and based mainly on Finnish. The recordings comes from Ardhon Ellammath (the Realm of the Elf-languages), a site which includes recordings of Quenya, Sindarin and other Tolkienian languages. The text in question is the Ringbearer’s Praise:
I haven’t been able to find an English version of this text though.
James on 27 May 2007 at 6:09 pm #
I was stuck: from the tonal quality of the speaker´s voice and some of the consonants I was sure that it was germanic (and in fact the reader was a native german speaker, so I was right) but I had nothing to pin it onto. I was thinking something far northern, but had no idea so I looked :)
Rurality on 27 May 2007 at 10:30 pm #
I must have watched LOTR way too may times, because I knew right off that it was “that Elf language”! Didn’t know what it was called though. :)
d.m.falk on 27 May 2007 at 11:32 pm #
I think it’s good that conlangs are being regarded for these mystery language quizzes. :)
d.m.f.
TJ on 28 May 2007 at 5:17 am #
believe me .. u dont wana hear Ayvarith ^_*
Ronald Kyrmse on 28 May 2007 at 1:24 pm #
The Ringbearers’ Praise (for it refers to _two_ Ringbearers, Frodo and Samwise) is in fact in _two_ languages of the Elvish family, namely Sindarin (lines 1 & 2) and Quenya (lines 3 & 4).
Cuio i Pheriain anann! Aglar’ni Pheriannath!
Daur a Berhael, Conin en Annûn! Eglerio!
A laita te, laita te! Andave laituvalmet!
Cormacolindor, a laita tárienna!
The “th” sound and initial “d” occur only in Sindarin, or Grey-elven, whose phonology was inspired by Welsh; Quenya, or High-elven, is the one that was inspired by Finnish, with lots of vowels and liquids.
Colm on 28 May 2007 at 3:01 pm #
@ Ronald Kyrmse: I stand corrected. Thanks very much for proving us all wrong! It’s great to learn something new. So Sindarin and Quenya. That’s cool and unusual! :-)
d.m.falk on 29 May 2007 at 7:28 am #
TJ: It could be worse- It could be Klingon! :)
d.m.f.
Keith on 29 May 2007 at 1:10 pm #
I thought it was Finnish or a related language.
newark1988 on 29 May 2007 at 4:32 pm #
When I first heard this I thought it was an eastern syllibic languange similer to Japanese or korean. And the accent was like a cross between German and Japanese. But I dont know?
Ronald Kyrmse on 30 May 2007 at 1:14 pm #
@ Colm: Thanks for the thanks!
An additional piece of information: In this text (line 2), the names of Frodo and Sam appear in Sindarin as “Daur” - that’s Frodo - and “Berhael” - the mutated form of “Perhael”, or Samwise (Halfwise). Yes, Sindarin has mutations similar to Welsh. ;-)