Language quiz
Here’s a recording of a song in a mystery language. Any ideas which language it is and where it’s spoken?
[Update] Here are the lyrics of the song:
Ferðist eg í millum landa
Síggi gleði sorg og stríð
Men ein myndin bjørt man standa
Minnir meg um bestu tíð
Ja har heima í tí dali
Har alt grønt og vakurt er
Eg í huga kátur spæli
Meðan skip um sjógvin fer
and here’s a translation:
??? in the midst of bright stars
In the midst of the sound of waves and lambs
Where harsh storms blow
Where no strings tie
Where I’m always free
Where the ocean is a friend
Where I’m free to go somewhere distant
Where fresh ???

LandTortoise on 08 Mar 2008 at 6:32 pm #
Just a guess- Icelandic?
Voytec on 08 Mar 2008 at 10:51 pm #
Some words sound very ‘North Germanic’, maybe Faroese?
PP on 09 Mar 2008 at 12:01 am #
I have no idea, what it could be, some words indded sound germanic, but overall sound resembles Finnish. I guess something spoken on swedish/finnish border (but I have never heard of anything like that) or maybe Finland Swedish.
(My mother said it sounds like some kind of Romani, but I don’t think so.)
JRice on 09 Mar 2008 at 4:38 am #
Sounds slavic to me. I’m guessing Bulgarian.
Daydreamer on 09 Mar 2008 at 10:58 am #
What about the Finno-Ugric language of the Saami people, which is spoken in the northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia?
Lau on 09 Mar 2008 at 11:52 am #
I agree with Voytec, I think it is Faroese.
I can understand quite a few of the words, but I still don’t understand what the song is about.
Damon Lord on 09 Mar 2008 at 5:31 pm #
I’d say Icelandic or Faeroese as well.
Voytec on 09 Mar 2008 at 5:48 pm #
It’s not Slavic and I don’t think it’s related to Saami in any way. If I hear it right, there’s something like ‘jag ar … og/och … og …’ and that must be Germanic. I can also hear something like ‘er som froskur’, and that could indicate Icelandic or Faroese: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/froskur Of course that’s all just guessing…
BG on 10 Mar 2008 at 4:44 am #
From my (limited) knowledge of Swedish, “jag ar … og/och … og” would mean “I am both … and”, right? So I also think it is Icelandic or Faroese, although it’s hard to tell which: on wiktionary the declensions of froskur were so close between the two.
tazgo on 10 Mar 2008 at 6:08 am #
I’m going to say Faroese as well. While it does seem to be North Germanic it doesn’t sound to me like any of the continental Scandinavian languages. I think I also heard a couple of sounds (the kind of “ea” diphthong and a couple of affricates), which, to my knowledge, don’t exist in Icelandic, so by process of elimination that leaves Faroese.
Simon on 10 Mar 2008 at 10:01 am #
The language is indeed Faroese (Føroyskt), a Northern Germanic language spoken on the Faroe Islands (Føroyar) by about 47,000 people. The recording comes from YouTube.
Halabund on 10 Mar 2008 at 11:11 pm #
I was hoping that we could get a transcript of the lyrics. Did anyone manage to note them down?
Simon on 11 Mar 2008 at 12:29 pm #
I haven’t managed to transcribe or find the lyrics, but I have discovered that the song is called A dekkinum and comes from Annika Hoydal’s album Spor i vandet / Spor í sjónum.
Halabund on 13 Mar 2008 at 6:39 pm #
Simon, someone has noted down the lyrics on the YouTube page. :-)
Halabund on 13 Mar 2008 at 6:44 pm #
The sound that is written as í sounds very similar to u (as pronounced in German) to my ears. It is no wonder that I found nothing with Google. Voytec, it is is not froskur, but frískur.