Name the language
Here’s a text in a mystery language.
Do you know or can you guess which language this is and where it’s spoken?
| Omniglot blog |
| language-related musings – one language is never enough / ní leor teanga amháin |
Here’s a text in a mystery language.
Do you know or can you guess which language this is and where it’s spoken?
This entry was posted on Sunday, February 7th, 2010 at 11:15 am and is filed under Language, Quiz questions, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
February 7th, 2010 at 12:14 pm
I think it is Nepali. The sentence-final verb cha is characterictic of this language.
February 7th, 2010 at 1:14 pm
It looks like either Hindi or Nepali. I don’t see the characters characteristic of other languages written with Devanagari ‘variants,’ such as Gujarati or Marathi.
February 7th, 2010 at 5:06 pm
Yup, it’s Nepali. First word is “Koirala” which is a Nepali name, and you are right, the “cha” as well as the word-letter structures similar to Hindi but reminiscent of Sanskrit are characteristic of Nepali.
February 7th, 2010 at 7:18 pm
It is surely Nepali, and not Hindi at all..
February 7th, 2010 at 7:19 pm
This BBC page in Nepali http://www.bbc.co.uk/nepali/ is additional reference to confirm this.
February 8th, 2010 at 10:53 am
Nepali it is..
February 8th, 2010 at 12:18 pm
No idea, but it’s beautiful :) I like your blog!
February 8th, 2010 at 12:19 pm
Nepalese is written in Devanagari? I didn’t know that at all…
Is it officially written in Devanagari or there are other variants for the same language?
February 8th, 2010 at 12:55 pm
@Will: “I don’t see the characters characteristic of other languages written with Devanagari ‘variants,’ such as Gujarati or Marathi.”
Although it has its origins in Devanagari, the Gujarati script is now quite distinct and not accessible to someone who only knows Devanagari – it looks quite different (check out the page on the main Omniglot site).
February 8th, 2010 at 3:08 pm
The answer is Nepali (नेपाली), which is spoken mainly in Nepal.
The text comes from आजभोलि.com (aajabholi.com)
February 9th, 2010 at 5:35 pm
TJ: Devanagari is the official script for Nepali (and Hindi).
February 12th, 2010 at 12:55 am
I have learned the Devanagari script, but not enough vocabulary to see the difference between Hindi and Nepali, in this case. Aside from knowing the grammar and vocabulary of both languages well enough to tell them apart, are there any other visual clues to look for?
It would be interesting to see video series on Indo-Aryan languages, kind of like what Dr. Arguelles has done with Germanic languages on YouTube.
February 13th, 2010 at 5:41 pm
Nepali can sometimes be seen written in Ranjana script, but Nagari is the standard.
February 15th, 2010 at 2:47 pm
either nepali,hindi or sanskrit