It may be Hebrew, but it’s a bit weird…

Sounds Polynesian. I heard “Manukau” twice, and since it is a city in New Zealand, I guess Maori. (At first, I thought it was some variety of Japanese, thanks to the frequent use of “wa” syllable.)

I hear glottal stops (so I think), which rules out Maori.

Going on the presence of glottal stops, labio-velar approximant (‘w’), and a seeming dearth of fricatives, I will still say something Polynesian, however.

Hmm, Andrea Barnett: is that the girl who wanted to sail around the world but had to abandon ship?
Definitely Polynesian; with the [v] sounds, I would guess Samoan but don’t know enough to make any more accurate guess.

I’m thinking Polynesian too, but all I can say beyond that is it’s not Hawaiian.

Either Samoan or Tokelauan.

d.m.f.

Kinda off the track here, but it made me feel a bit like a native american. Navajo?

I think it is Hawaiian. No doubt it’s Polynesian, but what is characteristic of Hawaiian is K instead of T in other languages.

However this excerpt has /t/, /s/, /f/ and /ŋ/, for which Hawaiian only has no /k/, /h/, /h/ and /n/ respectively. It is definitely from the southern Polynesian area and the pronunciation of “Andrea Barnett” in the second half sounds like an approximation of an Australian or New Zealand accent.

Oh, I forgot the/r/, for which Hawaiian has only /l/.

I’d say Maori, though with Polynesian languages ……

The answer is Tongan (Faka-Tonga), which is spoken mainly in Tonga.

The recording comes from Radio New Zealand International.

Faka-Tonga?
That’s funny. “Fak” in Arabic means “jaw” ! :)

argh! dammit! i just figured out how to tell Tongan from other polynesian langs the other day, and i missed this challenge! curses!

TJ: Well, “fak” has also an English meaning, even if spelled a bit differently, and some people certainly would find it more funny than “jaw”. Which reminds me that in colloquial Czech some people use the question “fakt, jo?” when hearing something surprising or strange. It means “really?” (literally “fact, yes?”), but for English speakers it sounds like something which I think the spam filter would not allow to publish if spelled correctly.