17 thoughts on “Language quiz

  1. I heard ‘Kannada’….so I assume it’s the Dravidian language Kannada, the official language of the state of Karnataka. But I might be wrong because at the very beginning, there was the greetings ‘Namaskar’….So it could be an Indo-European language of South Asia.

  2. I’d say definitely Indian sub-continent, and not Indo-European. I also thought I heard Kannada. The rhythm was not like Hindi/Marathi, nor was the sound pallet. I’d guess South India.

    @Bennie: South Indian languages have lots of Sanskrit loan words, and namaskar is pan-Indian.

  3. A lot of retroflex consonants; it sounds Dravidian. I heard the word Karnataka; most probably it’s Kannada.

  4. Definitely Kannada, a South Indian language…and the recording comes from Stanford University, I believe, in the San Francisco Bay Area.

    d.m.f.

  5. I assumed Dravidian right away but it didn’t sound so much like my impressions of Tamil (more rat a tat) or Malayalam (also) or Telegu (more melodic?) so I’ll go with Kannada.

  6. I heard several Spanish words in there (“cuando”, definitely) so I’m not so sure about the Indian guess. Whatever it is, it’s got a good bit of romance language influence in it. Tagalog? Probably not, but that’s the only thing I can think of besides Catalan, and it’s probably not Catalan…

  7. The pronunciation is very Indian. I have also heard Karnataka, so there is a very little possibility that it is anything else than Kannada.

  8. The music alone throws this recording right into the subcontinent- and I didn’t hear any spanish or anything remotely romance except the word “university” which of course is Latin run through English. I don’t know much about Indian language, but I know Hindi when I hear it and can tell the difference between that and Tamil- and this didn’t sound like Tamil to me either. I also heard “Karnataka” so, I’m gonna go with Kannada as well.

  9. It looks like Kristang spoken in Goa,South India, it is a mixed of Portuguese and konkani.

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