Name the language

Here’s a recording in a mystery language. Any ideas which language it is and in which countries it’s spoken?

Clue: This language is spoken mainly in Africa.

Comments (0)

michaelJanuary 26th, 2008 at 10:32 pm

Berber?

d.m.falkJanuary 27th, 2008 at 2:17 am

Chadian? Sudanese?

PodolskyJanuary 27th, 2008 at 7:21 am

Amharic, spoken mainly in Ethiopia. Also used by thousands in Israel.

BenJanuary 27th, 2008 at 4:03 pm

Could be Amharic – but I speak a bit and I couldn’t understand any of it. Granted, it was really fast and fuzzy.

ColinJanuary 27th, 2008 at 7:17 pm

I’m guessing Amharic. There are a lot of Ethiopian and Somali immigrants around here (tens of thousands and rapidly increasing), and in addition to English, Hmong, and Spanish, the languages I’m most likely to hear on the bus are Arabic and Ethiopian Amharic, which sounds a lot like this.

DaydreamerJanuary 27th, 2008 at 10:56 pm

My first impression was that it could be a Dravidian or New Indo-Arian language. Then I saw Simon’s clue that it’s spoken mainly in Africa.
So I make a weird guess: Bhojpuri, spoken on the island of Mauritius (Africa) and in India.

SimonJanuary 28th, 2008 at 9:56 am

The language is Amharic and is spoken mainly in Ethiopia and Eritrea.

The recording comes from YouTube.

d.m.falkJanuary 28th, 2008 at 10:01 am

No, it’s definitely north African, and I specicifcally discounted Berber because of the large Berber community in France.

I first thought Amharic, too- One of the several languages variously spolen in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia- but as there is a sizable community of Ethiopians outside Ethiopia- mainly here in the US- I’m also discounting that.

I’ll stick with either Chadian or Sudanese, given the recent UN deployment of troops in southern Sudan and the border clashes drawing Chad and Sudan closer to an all-out war.

Of course, I could be wrong, and it may be one of the languages of one of the top teams in the Africa Cup football (soccer) touney in Ghana, perhaps even Ghanian itself. :)

d.m.f.

d.m.falkJanuary 30th, 2008 at 11:24 am

Oh, come on- I can’t be the last, here… :)

d.m.f.