Omniglot - the blog

Language quiz

Simon on 08 Jun 2008

Language and Quiz questions | Comments (22)

22 Responses to “Language quiz”

1. d.m.falk on 08 Jun 2008 at 8:32 pm #

   My first guess would be Zulu.

   d.m.f.

2. Mike on 08 Jun 2008 at 8:56 pm #

   It sounds very much like a Portuguese dialect, or perhaps a creole based on that language.

3. michael on 08 Jun 2008 at 10:37 pm #

   Sounds vaguely Bantu, and I think I heard the root “rundi”, so my guess is Kirundi.

4. xarxa on 08 Jun 2008 at 11:41 pm #

   i heard ‘[bu]rundi’ too, and id go for bantu as well…

5. Strika on 09 Jun 2008 at 12:07 am #

   Hi,
   I’ve been visiting this blog for a while, but this is the first time I will leave a comment. I like very much your blog and your language quizzes.

   As for this quiz, it sounds like a Bantu language but with Portuguese influence. So my guess would be Kimbundu.

6. Simon on 09 Jun 2008 at 9:48 am #

   It is indeed a Bantu language, but not Zulu, Kimbundu or Kirundi.

7. pavel on 09 Jun 2008 at 12:45 pm #

   tswana?

8. Greg on 09 Jun 2008 at 1:33 pm #

   I will guess in the same general area and say that it’s Swazi.

9. Jason Fisher on 09 Jun 2008 at 3:50 pm #

   I’m going to guess it’s Luganda, one of the major languages spoken in Uganda.

10. Simon on 09 Jun 2008 at 5:03 pm #

    It isn’t Tswana, Swazi or Luganda either.

    Another clue: this language is mutually intelligible with Kirundi.

11. TJ on 09 Jun 2008 at 5:59 pm #

    aaa… what is Kirundi? :)

12. pittmirg on 09 Jun 2008 at 6:10 pm #

    “Kirundi is closely related to Kinyarwanda, the main language of neighbouring country Rwanda and to Giha, a language spoken in western Tanzania. Kirundi and Kinyarwanda are mutually intelligible.”

    So probably it’s Kinyarwanda :)

13. Jackie on 09 Jun 2008 at 6:11 pm #

    Kinyarwanda?

14. AR on 09 Jun 2008 at 6:41 pm #

    Kinyarwanda.
    It’s interesting that many news agencies combine their Kinyarwanda and Kirundi services in one because of the mutual intelligibility.

15. VJ on 09 Jun 2008 at 8:01 pm #

    Boy, I guess I was waaaaaaay off. I immediately thought of some distant dialect of Farsi.

16. michael farris on 09 Jun 2008 at 9:53 pm #

    My first guess (with no clues) was either Kinyrwanda or Kirundi

17. BG on 10 Jun 2008 at 2:07 am #

    @VJ: Farsi actually came to my mind too, but I wasn’t confident enough to post it and as soon as I saw the Bantu comments I knew they were right.

    I am going with Kinyarwanda.

18. Simon on 10 Jun 2008 at 8:41 am #

    It is indeed Kinyarwanda (Ikinyarwanda), a Bantu language spoken by about 7 million people mainly in Rwanda

    The recording comes from the BBC World Service.

19. Tim on 11 Jun 2008 at 4:27 am #

    Like Strika above, I enjoy these quizzes despite most of them being way too hard for me. Both Mike and Strika thought this language had some sort of Portuguese influence and I had the same feeling. Can anybody analyse why this might be?

20. Alfia on 19 Jun 2008 at 4:38 am #

    My guess was also that it was a Portuguese-African creole, possibly from Cape Verde islands. It probably sounded like that to us because of the nasal vowels and all the ‘zh’ sounds it shares with Portuguese. :)

21. wordlover on 21 Jun 2008 at 11:58 pm #

    I know nothing about African dialects, and my first thought was Tamil or some other north Indian dialect.

    However, the dipthong slurring makes it sound Bantu.

    Hey, I’m getting better at this.

22. ismael on 26 Jun 2008 at 9:09 pm #

    I was way way off as well. I was thinking something European.