Name the language
Here’s a recording in a mystery language.
Do you know or can you guess which language it’s in and where it’s spoken?
June 7th, 2009 in
Language, Quiz questions
Here’s a recording in a mystery language.
Do you know or can you guess which language it’s in and where it’s spoken?
Lithuanian?
i think lithuanian too
To my ears it sounds slightly slavic but with much less of the consonant clusters. Thus my guess is that it’s either Latvian or Lithuanian. Due to the deep economic crisis in Latvia I’ve heard some Latvian on the news. Thus I too believe this to be Lithuanian.
Wow, I was waiting for this.
Lithuanian for sure because it’s my language.
And it talks about some pension payments. Boring stuff.
At first I thought balkans even while realizing it didn’t sound like any balkan language, but after seeing the comments here I assume it’s Lithuanian.
Well, who am I to add something else…. By the way: interesting sounds in Lithuanian, nasal like in French, combined with Polish-like dental and alveolar fricatives and Russian palatisations and velarisations…
Yeah, I was gonna say what peter said…:)
The language is indeed Lithuanian (lietuvių kalba) which is spoken mainly in Lithuania.
The recording comes from Žinių radijas.
My first thought was Lithuanian, but then my second thought was, “Nah, that would be too easy!”
WOW, I can’t believe I got it right!
“Anyone wishing to hear how Indo-Europeans spoke should come and listen to a Lithuanian peasant.”
—Antoine Meillet
russian? (not serbo-croat,)…
“Anyone wishing to hear how Indo-Europeans spoke should come and listen to a Lithuanian peasant.”
—Antoine Meillet
Why? Because the Lithuanian upper class spoke Russian? German? French? Or did/do they speak a less conservative form of the language?
While I do not speak Lithuanian, I know from studying European history that the native Lithuanian aristocracy was assimilated or exterminated when the baltic regions were conquered by the Teutonic Knights in the 1100s. From that point on, the rulers of the approximate area now known as “Lithuania” were generally German-speakers. Despite the conquest of the area by the Russian Czar Peter I (so-called “the great”) in the 1720s, most of the local lords were of German cultural affiliation up until world war one.
I always thought that quote was to illustrate the fact that the Lithuanian case system retains more of the features of I-E than any of the other live languages today. I could be entirely off base on that, though. Anybody know?