Language quiz

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?

Comments (26)

RoyJuly 5th, 2009 at 3:51 pm

Amharic

renato figueiredoJuly 5th, 2009 at 5:06 pm

This week I don’t have any idea of which language is spoken, but the news is about Barak Obama, the American president.

LandTortoiseJuly 5th, 2009 at 5:17 pm

I’m guessing CHECHAN spoken in Chechnya as I think I heard the word in the recording.

RivkaJuly 5th, 2009 at 5:58 pm

I’ll take a wild guess and posit that it’s one of the dizzyingly many languages of the Indian subcontinent. . . .

AlexeyJuly 5th, 2009 at 6:24 pm

Amharic, I think.

PodolskyJuly 6th, 2009 at 4:48 am

Tigrinya

OnotheoJuly 6th, 2009 at 5:50 am

The words seems very clear to me. It sounds good to me but I don’t know what language this is.

xarxaJuly 6th, 2009 at 12:22 pm

not a clue!

GregJuly 6th, 2009 at 2:09 pm

maybe estonian or finnish?

Peter J. FrankeJuly 6th, 2009 at 2:17 pm

It sounds a bit like Tigrinya but it is NOT. Sorry, I have no idea what it is…..

TommyJuly 6th, 2009 at 3:38 pm

I agree with Onotheo – the speaking is somehow very “clear” sounding to my ear, but I do not know the language. I know its not Russian but to my amateur ear it sounds similar.

peter j. frankeJuly 6th, 2009 at 6:37 pm

I take a chance this is from the Caucasian mountain range.

TJJuly 6th, 2009 at 10:46 pm

Doesn’t sound turkic, and not slavic to my ear so we might cancel out the caucasian range.
I would go for Amharic, or something African.

JayanJuly 7th, 2009 at 3:14 am

Well, I’m pretty sure it’s not an Indian language; didn’t have the right feel. It did sound like something Semitic, and since the most popular guess is Amharic, I’ll go with that, though having never hear Amharic before, I can’t be sure.

ChapJuly 7th, 2009 at 3:28 am

Now that I have read your comments, I would also say Amharic.

However, my first guess turned to Kurdish.

Petréa MitchellJuly 7th, 2009 at 5:11 am

I have no real idea, so how about Indonesian?

Juan ShimminJuly 7th, 2009 at 7:15 am

Malayalam?

Malik diNataJuly 7th, 2009 at 7:32 am

Definitely not Indonesian, Petrea ;-)

SimonJuly 7th, 2009 at 8:47 am

The language is Amharic (ኣማርኛ), which is spoken mainly in Ethiopia and Eritrea.

The recording comes from Kol Israel.

RoyJuly 7th, 2009 at 3:33 pm

I was not entirely sure but my guess (the first one on the list) was correct. I actually thought it was from an Israeli radio station because Barak is mentioned there. This is probably Ehud Barak – the current minister of defence in the Israeli government, and not Barack Obama. I have heared this language here and there in Israel but not enough to be sure it was it. Ethiopian immigrants in Israel still speak it.

Trond EngenJuly 7th, 2009 at 5:03 pm

Even though I noticed “minister Barak” I couldn’t get around this one. I got stuck with what I thought was a Portuguese loan in /amerikãõ/.

DanielJuly 7th, 2009 at 8:08 pm

I’ve heard Amharic spoken in Israel a lot, and it does sound like it after knowing it’s it. But it was always spoken quickly and there was something different about it when I heard it, so I couldn’t tell it’s Amharic before.

peter j. frankeJuly 7th, 2009 at 8:11 pm

Well, I consulted a colleague from Eritrea. She grew up outside that area but speaks Tigrinya. So that’s why I was sure it was not that laguage. But she did not recognise it was Amharic. May be the recording is with an accent???

JeffJuly 8th, 2009 at 4:04 am

My guess is either Amharic or Magyar

TJJuly 8th, 2009 at 5:02 am

it’s already stated that it’s Amharic :)

TeaJuly 8th, 2009 at 6:49 pm

Well, I’m late. But it doesn’t sound like any language I’m familiar with. At least I could tell that it was not Estonian or Finnish, as someone of you guessed.