Omniglot - the blog

Language quiz

Simon on 01 Dec 2007

Language and Quiz questions | Comments (17)

17 Responses to “Language quiz”

1. Halabund on 01 Dec 2007 at 3:54 pm #

   Something Germanic, but I have no idea what …

2. Colm on 01 Dec 2007 at 4:55 pm #

   Is it Schweizerdeutsch (Swiss German)?

3. James on 01 Dec 2007 at 5:25 pm #

   a dialect of german.. maybe swiss german, but I remember it as being a little more sing-song. I have friends who are bringing up their children trilingual in german, swiss german and english. He´s swiss, she´s german, they lived in the UK for 3 or 4 years.

4. Dr. C.S. Lewis-Barrie, Ph.D. on 01 Dec 2007 at 7:20 pm #

   Without question this is Germordic, also know as Nornanic, a mixed language that is part Danish and High German, carried by Swabian and Swiss immigrants to Denmark.

5. jake on 01 Dec 2007 at 7:24 pm #

   It’s definitely a dialect of German. It’s tone reminds me of Italian, so it could be Schweizerdeutsch, or maybe Slovenian.

6. Halabund on 01 Dec 2007 at 7:54 pm #

   C.S. Lewis-Barrie,
   Google gives no results for those keywords. Can you provide more information, perhaps a link?

7. Alessandro Delgado on 02 Dec 2007 at 3:33 am #

   @ “Dr. C.S. Lewis-Barrie, Ph.D.”

   Lol!

8. BG on 02 Dec 2007 at 6:09 am #

   Without looking: It sounds like a cross between German and Italian.

9. BG on 02 Dec 2007 at 6:12 am #

   Well, since Switzerland is between Germany and Italy, that could logically be it.

10. d.m.falk on 02 Dec 2007 at 7:16 am #

    Tyrolian German? (The German spoken in northern Italy.)

    d.m.f.

11. Lau on 02 Dec 2007 at 11:16 am #

    Sound a lot like it’s a Swiss German dialect. It sounds like it’s relatively close to standard German, so it’s probably one of the northern dialects.

12. Simon on 02 Dec 2007 at 3:40 pm #

    The answer is Swiss German (Schwytzerdütsch) and the recording comes from YouTube

13. Simone on 02 Dec 2007 at 5:45 pm #

    Yes, it is Swiss German - but the speaker grew up either bilingually or acquired it as a second langague. And it contains a lot of swearing too!!
    The sample also exhibits a relatively new phenomenon in that the dialect could hardly be located geographically but probably by way of sociolinguistic criteria. Swiss dialects are in fact difficult to understand under the unifying umbrella term of Swiss German - they are not distinct enough from other southern German varieties and among themselves are very heterogeneous.
    The sample from YouTube sounds more like someone making fun of Swiss German.

14. Samuel on 07 Dec 2007 at 4:36 pm #

    I know no dialect of german. I wish i could learn Bavarian. I’m learning the song “Bayern des samma mia” to help me with it. Oh yeah does “schlömpe” mean bitch in german?

15. Simon on 07 Dec 2007 at 5:35 pm #

    Samuel - this site has some useful phrases in Bavarian, with recordings.

16. BG on 09 Dec 2007 at 6:04 am #

    Samuel: It is “Schlampe” in standard German, and basically, yes it does.

17. Samuel on 10 Dec 2007 at 3:56 pm #

    Thanks Guys!