11 thoughts on “Language quiz

  1. I think it’s most likely a western hemisphere language, either in Mexico/Central America or somewhere in Western South America. No ideas yet to narrow it down though.

  2. Something makes me want to say Basque, but I can’t hear a single Spanish loan or any word-final k’s. Still I think it’s non-IE but European or borderline so. The obvious place to look would be the Caucasus, but I can’t recognize any Russian loans either, and the phoneme set sounds far too reasonable. (Could I possibly be overestimating my ability to recognize loans from languages I don’t know? No, hardly.) Maybe Daydreamer is right and it’s Armenian, perhaps expatriate Armenian. But I’ll go back to Basque.

    [Daydreamer, I’ve been meaning to ask. Are you the same Daydreamer my wife knows from someweb completely different?]

  3. I must admit that the main reason for picking Armenian was the occurence of word final (vowel-ts-vowel) that seems to be a grammatical morpheme in that language. And the lack of Russian loanwords could be a feature of the variety spoken by the vast community of Armenian immigrants to France (i.e. singer Charles Aznavour and the like).
    But, the more I write about it the more it becomes clear that I may be completely wrong.
    (@Trond Engen: No way. Simon’s site is the only place I use Daydreamer as a nick. My regards to your wife, anyway.)

  4. I was thinking it sounded Indian of origin (as in India), so I’ll hazard a guess at Sarnami, the Bhojpuri creole spoken in Suriname.

    d.m.f.

  5. I actually thought it might be Machiguenga after googling around for the word tasorintsi, which is said several times. Didn’t dare say anything because I cheated 😉

  6. I wondered if it could be Mapudungún (before looking at the comments above), because I thought I caught a word like Araucana two or three times, and a word like Chile at least once. However, I don’t think the Mapuche use the term Araucania for their land, so I was off on a false trail (even if it did get me to the right continent).

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