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 (7)

YitzhakOctober 11th, 2009 at 11:22 am

It’s definitely a Turkic language, but I have no idea which one, so I’m guessing it’s Turkish.

DaydreamerOctober 11th, 2009 at 11:33 am

It sounds very Turkish to my ears including “Ankara” (capital of Turkey)and “dokuz” (9). But, since that would be too easy, I’d go for Azerbaijani.

peter j. frankeOctober 11th, 2009 at 1:33 pm

Turkic indeed, but which variation? I go for Turkmen.

peter j. frankeOctober 11th, 2009 at 1:36 pm

After a second listening I change may guess: it is Turkish!!

Christopher MillerOctober 11th, 2009 at 7:49 pm

Sounds like Turkish, definitely. Not only for the “Ankara’ya” more or less at the middle of the recording (a pretty good contextual clue), but also for the “softened” (liquid) word-final r sounds from the first (male) voice and the way he devoices it only a few words into the recording in “(unclear) rangi b?r, eh…”. In any other Turkic language I’ve heard, the r is still pronounced as a good old fashioned trrrill. That said, the [æ] sounds I hear, for example in what I transcribed as “rangi” here, are typical of Azeri as far as I know, but who knows — maybe they’re just a superficial phonetic-level pronunciation of /a/ in some varieties of current Euro-Turkish…

I do go on, don’t I…

SimonOctober 12th, 2009 at 4:22 pm

The language is indeed Turkish (Türkçe) which is spoken mainly in Turkey.

The recording comes from TRT

Petréa MitchellOctober 13th, 2009 at 5:34 am

Argh, the one time my wild guess was right! I’ve got to catch these quizzes on Sunday…