Very close to German. Maybe a dialect of German? or Yiddish?

Sounded “nordic” to me. I don’t think it’s a dialect of German. If anything, seemed closer to Danish.

It sounds exactly like Danish to me. But surely that would be too easy for the Omniglot quiz?!

Sounds very Nordic. The uvular fricative throws me off. It is a phoneme of Danish, but I do not here the stød to go with it.

Southern Swedish (Skåne, Malmö)?

I believe it’s Danish.

Definitely a dialect of German. Swiss German (Schwyzerdütsch)?

Glo’ddal sdo’ps in the middle ov vø’rds, affrica’ded t(s)’s, ri’sing declaratsive intsona’tion, voicing of consonants… Listening tso thi’s, i’d was obvious thad the sbea’gas were tsa’lging in Danish.

(To William:) This recording has støds like written Vietnamese has diacritics! Al’t, læ’ser and so on; just listen for the intrusive glottal stops.

Sounds like Danish. But while many Danish speakers sound like they’re trying to keep the exact sounds they’re making a secret, this seems exceptionally clearly articulated.

Sounds a lot like Danish.

@michael: It *is* exceptionally clearly articulated – just what you’d expect from a radio drama. It’s about a man reading his poems to a woman and she starts to feel more and more heartbroken since none of the poems are about her. At least that’s my interpretation of this short segment.

lol bestemt dansk :D for nemt!
lol definitely Danish :D too easy!

It will also be interesting to hear how old this recording is. I may be wrong here, but my guess is that this kind of pronunciation would be a bit out of fashion these days. (I’m Swedish.)

An extra tidbit: if you go to this week’s “What’s new” on the Omniglot main page, there’s a link to the Tower of Babel story in three written versions, two of them with recorded voice versions.

ps- Sorry, I forgot to mention that this is a Danish version of the Tower of Babel…

Since Danish is thought to be way too easy, the language must be Faeroese spoken in the Faeroe Islands, which has a stamp “official language” instead of “Danish dialect” on it.

Not Faroese. Faroese could be described as Icelandic spoken with a heavy Anglo-Irish accent (to oversimplify things to a fault).

@Wulfahariaz:

I hear this type of pronuniciation in a lot of the news and stuff, so I think it’s just that this is a more formal context.

@Daydreamer:

Faroese is from the Western Scandinavian branch while Danish is from the Eastern. So it’s way more than a weird dialect of Danish (though the weird part still stands :p).

Some obscure, rare and archaic dialect of Swedish/Norwegian/Danish spoken in some little village in the middle of nowhere…maybe??

Danish for sure. And I agree: The pronunciation is too artificial. Could be foreigners, non-natives? But it’s too Danish to be Gøtudansk. But still, maybe Faroese natives speaking Danish?

it is not German but it sounds Nordic … or at most Sweedish .. How to We Know the Answer? I am curious

Skånska maybe? It sounded a little Swedish to me and that’s the only dialect of it I know that might be popular enough to merit its’ own radio drama. Plus I keep hearing that uvular fricative “r” like Timbuktu uses when he raps in skånska:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLvQbkj-exE

The answer is Danish (dansk), which is spoken mainly in Denmark.

The recording comes from dr.dk.

told you all it was just newscaster danish…

Wow, I would’ve guessed German. Danish is closer to German than I would’ve thought, apparently (I knew it was Germanic, but having studied Swedish before I didn’t think it was that close since Swedish is also “Germanic” and there’s no way you’re mistaking Swedish for German). Crazy. Thanks.

Cheers,
Andrew

Danish usually sounds like the speaker has marbles in his mouth. This sounded clear, and I didn’t despise it as much. ;)

Even Danes often have trouble understanding their mumblings, so radio broadcasts need to be super clear. Also the pronunciation is a little bit old-fashioned. Definitely not contemporary Copenhagen dialect.

Its most definitely Swedish!

Unless Danish is that close, which i know they are similar, but I heard some Swedish words in the dialouge…