Language quiz

Here’s a recording in a mystery language.

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

September 25th, 2011 in Language, Puzzles

Comments (7)

J RobertsSeptember 25th, 2011 at 12:41 pm

Sounds very much like chiShona or something very closely related like Manyika or iKalanga

JoséSeptember 25th, 2011 at 1:59 pm

If it’s not Swahili, it must be close to it, maybe Shikomor, Kinyarwanda…?

J RobertsSeptember 25th, 2011 at 5:59 pm

I dont’ think it’s Swahili. I’ve had another listen. Some words like “pambere”, “kuti” initially made me think Shona, but the typical whistling sounds weren’t there. I’ve ruled out Shona-like so Manyika, Kalanga, Ndau, Tonga and moved north, it sounds similar to Chewa but I don’t think it is. Is it Tumbuka?

Chris MillerSeptember 25th, 2011 at 11:33 pm

It sounds very closely related to Swahili and also like Swahili doesn’t sound tonal. One of the main differences here is that it has [β], which shows up in Swahili as [w], for example in the human plural noun class ‘βa’ instead of Swahili ‘wa’. It must be a northern or eastern Tanzanian language very closely related to Swahili if not some phonologically conservative Swahili dialect I don’t know about or perhaps once did and have since forgotten.

C MurdockSeptember 26th, 2011 at 12:02 am

Semi-random guess: Tshivenda

SimonSeptember 26th, 2011 at 4:14 pm

J Roberts got it – the answer is Tumbuka (chiTumbuka), a Bantu language spoken in parts of Malawi, Zambia and Tanzania by about 2 million people.

The recording comes from the Global Recordings Network.

renatoSeptember 27th, 2011 at 1:23 pm

thanks a lot for the link site “The recording comes from the Global Recordings Network”.