Language quiz

Here’s a recording in a mystery language.

Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?

September 11th, 2011 in Language, Quiz questions

Comments (11)

penniferSeptember 11th, 2011 at 1:48 am

Something spoken on the Indian subcontinent?

clSeptember 11th, 2011 at 3:17 am

Definitely North Indian sounding. I could pick out ‘Manmohan Singh’ and ‘Nepal’ in the clip. Must be a close relative to Hindi, but I won’t answer Hindi straight away because I didn’t hear a lot of ‘hai’ and ‘hum’.

Dennis KingSeptember 11th, 2011 at 3:56 am

With all those “che” instead of “hai”, it must be Gujarati.

stormboySeptember 11th, 2011 at 9:27 am

I think Dennis King has it.

bennieSeptember 11th, 2011 at 9:57 am

Yes, basically it’s Hindi with all the “hai” replaced with “che”. So it’s either Marathi or Gujarati.

SathyarthiSeptember 11th, 2011 at 2:12 pm

- Yep, I too agree with Dennis, stormboy and bennie and am more inclined towards Gujarati as I believe Marathi has the distinct ‘za’ consonant as well as the retroflex ‘la’.

Chris MillerSeptember 11th, 2011 at 3:49 pm

Ditto Dennis.

Somebody ought to do a humorous t-shirt with a Che Guevara-style image of a famous Gujarati and છે (‘che’ in Gujarati script) as the caption…

RauliSeptember 11th, 2011 at 5:04 pm

I have no experience in modern Indian languages (only Sanskrit), so could someone explain what those hai’s and che’s mean? Thanks.

Chris MillerSeptember 11th, 2011 at 6:49 pm

Third person (singular only?) of ‘be’, i.e. ‘is’.

RauliSeptember 11th, 2011 at 8:03 pm

Ah, that would explain the abundance. Thank you for the reply.

SimonSeptember 12th, 2011 at 7:22 pm

The answer is Gujarati (ગુજરાતી), which is spoken mainly in India, particularly in the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh.

The recording comes from the SBS Radio.