Name that language

By Simon

This week’s challenge is the identify the language below and to translate the phrase:

Mysterious language

Clues: this language is spoken in an Asian country and the phrase has something to do with transportation.

33 thoughts on “Name that language”

  1. obviously burmese 🙂
    but well … maybe I will translate it later when i find a dictionary with plenty of time 🙂

  2. Ah, TJ beat me to it. It’s Burmese, which apparently was originally written without straight lines, due to the method of writing with pointed styluses on leaves–straight lines would tear the leaves…

  3. By the way, now that Burma’s new name is Myanmar, what is the new word for “Burmese”?

    The Oriya and south-Indian Brahmi-derived scripts are also very curvy because they too practiced writing on leaves.

  4. Myanmarese?
    Myanmarian?
    Myani?
    Myan?
    Myanmari?

    hmm choose 🙂

    what’s the adjective of “Hong Kong” ?

  5. And the answer is Burmese – well done TJ! The phrase means “Where does this bus go?”.

    The official name of Burmese is Myanmar, though most people still call it Burmese. Those who don’t recognise the current rulers of Myanmar call the country Burma.

    The residents of Hong Kong are called Hongkongers.

  7. TJ – sorry, no actual prizes this time either, but would you like to come up with a question for this week’s quiz?

  9. I still use “Burma” as a form of protest… but also because I can always count on some smartalecky pedant to correct me… and then I pounce! ha! I had this with Zaire too.

    When I was in India a couple of weeks ago, the locals would still talk to me of Madras, Bombay and Cochin. And I was doing my best to be all correct. Is it just because I was a tourist?

    But what bothers me is a lack of an attibutive form for the United States, like “Unitedstatesian”, similar to Spanish “Estadunidense”. I’m normally comfortable with using the universally understood “American”, but there’s always an indignant Argentinean or Mexican (bless them) in the crowd who takes umbrage to the “US imperialist appropriation” of the word “American”. Unfortunately the phrase “of the US” would be an awkward replacement in a sentence such as “I feel more European than American”.

  10. In German we call the things from the USA either “amerikanisch” (american) or “US-amerikanisch” (US-american). The second version is used very, very rarely and only if you want to make clear that you mean something from the USA and not from somewhere else in America. Actually I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone using that adjective… :/
    The same is for the people: either “Amerikaner” or sometimes “US-Amerikaner”, though in this case, both versions are used, with the second version becoming more and more popular in the news recently; you know, political correctness… 😉

  11. >> Todd: maybe mexicans and argentians use the word “america” or “american” as a default meaning for “from latin america” and the same for the spanish. As you know most of the american continent was dominant by spainiards before so I would hazarda guess that as we have in our non-latin cultures that “american” would mean someone from “USA” maybe spanish and people in south america hold “american” for “someone from latin america” and thus was born the need to emphasize that some person or something is from USA and not from just America, and for this they say “unitedstatian” …. maybe?! 🙂

  12. Just in passing since it hasn’t been mentioned.

    The adjective from “Myanmar” is supposed to be “Myanma” (no “r”). The “r” is in any case linguistically spurious – it was created by non linguists to as an attempt to show that the final syllable of the noun is pronounced in low tone. The final syllable of the r-less adjective form is pronounced in creaky tone.

    I have never heard the language called Myanma though – those who use “Myanmar” still seem to call the language “Burmese”.

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