Omniglot - the blog

Language quiz

Simon on 27 Oct 2007

Language and Music and Quiz questions | Comments (12)

12 Responses to “Language quiz”

1. Dr. C.S. Lewis-Barrie, Ph.D. on 27 Oct 2007 at 5:39 pm #

   This is a dialect of Indo-Aryan. I hope you have the rights to reproduce music from the Xena: Warrior Princess soundtrack!

2. Jonathan Katz on 27 Oct 2007 at 7:10 pm #

   Kurdish, perhaps?

3. Daydreamer on 27 Oct 2007 at 9:32 pm #

   Though the structure of the words is obscured by the singing, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a Romance language. Maybe Sardinian?

4. vautour on 27 Oct 2007 at 10:25 pm #

   The last bit sounds like ‘kon muncho alegria’ - Sephardic Spanish?

5. Harris E. on 27 Oct 2007 at 10:53 pm #

   I’m about 99% it’s not ladino (”sephardic spanish”). As for a guess, it has a very middle-eastern quality- how about Pashto?

6. d.m.falk on 28 Oct 2007 at 1:54 am #

   I’ll go with Ladino. The middle-eastern feel is apropos for Moorish Spain, in which not only was there an Arabic culture flourishing on the Iberian penninsula, but under the Moors, the Spanish Jews also flourished. The Andalusian influence is still felt in modern Spanish and Latino culture.

   d.m.f.

7. BG on 28 Oct 2007 at 2:43 am #

   I had a feeling that it was either Romance or Indo-Aryan. Ladino seems to be a possibility.

8. Podolsky on 28 Oct 2007 at 6:41 am #

   Ladino

9. Daydreamer on 28 Oct 2007 at 9:16 am #

   Now that I’ve listened closely several times, I’m sure that the lyrics contain “..de la madre…grande…a mi vista…que tu padre”.
   It’s hard to believe that so many spanish elements would have survived in Ladino, which nowadays seems to be spoken exclusively in Israel.
   So I go with Caló, the language of the Spanish Roma, who gave us the Flamenco.

10. Simon on 28 Oct 2007 at 3:15 pm #

    The answer is Ladino. The song is a lullaby called Nani Nani sung by Yasmin Levy and comes from Youtube

11. Evans Knight on 01 Nov 2007 at 11:59 pm #

    agh i love yasmin levy. i have more ladino music than any other language on my ipod. it’s so beautiful.

12. BG on 02 Nov 2007 at 4:47 am #

    It is very beatiful music.