Language quiz
Here’s a recording of a song in a mystery language. Any ideas which language it is and where it’s spoken?
[Update] Here are the lyrics of the song:
Ferðist eg í millum landa
Síggi gleði sorg og stríð
Men ein myndin bjørt man standa
Minnir meg um bestu tíð
Ja har heima í tí dali
Har alt grønt og vakurt er
Eg í huga kátur spæli
Meðan skip um sjógvin fer
and here’s a translation:
??? in the midst of bright stars
In the midst of the sound of waves and lambs
Where harsh storms blow
Where no strings tie
Where I’m always free
Where the ocean is a friend
Where I’m free to go somewhere distant
Where fresh ???
Just a guess- Icelandic?
Some words sound very ‘North Germanic’, maybe Faroese?
I have no idea, what it could be, some words indded sound germanic, but overall sound resembles Finnish. I guess something spoken on swedish/finnish border (but I have never heard of anything like that) or maybe Finland Swedish.
(My mother said it sounds like some kind of Romani, but I don’t think so.)
Sounds slavic to me. I’m guessing Bulgarian.
What about the Finno-Ugric language of the Saami people, which is spoken in the northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia?
I agree with Voytec, I think it is Faroese.
I can understand quite a few of the words, but I still don’t understand what the song is about.
I’d say Icelandic or Faeroese as well.
It’s not Slavic and I don’t think it’s related to Saami in any way. If I hear it right, there’s something like ‘jag ar … og/och … og …’ and that must be Germanic. I can also hear something like ‘er som froskur’, and that could indicate Icelandic or Faroese: http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/froskur Of course that’s all just guessing…
From my (limited) knowledge of Swedish, “jag ar … og/och … og” would mean “I am both … and”, right? So I also think it is Icelandic or Faroese, although it’s hard to tell which: on wiktionary the declensions of froskur were so close between the two.
I’m going to say Faroese as well. While it does seem to be North Germanic it doesn’t sound to me like any of the continental Scandinavian languages. I think I also heard a couple of sounds (the kind of “ea” diphthong and a couple of affricates), which, to my knowledge, don’t exist in Icelandic, so by process of elimination that leaves Faroese.
The language is indeed Faroese (Føroyskt), a Northern Germanic language spoken on the Faroe Islands (Føroyar) by about 47,000 people. The recording comes from YouTube.
I was hoping that we could get a transcript of the lyrics. Did anyone manage to note them down?
I haven’t managed to transcribe or find the lyrics, but I have discovered that the song is called A dekkinum and comes from Annika Hoydal’s album Spor i vandet / Spor í sjónum.
Simon, someone has noted down the lyrics on the YouTube page. :-)
The sound that is written as í sounds very similar to u (as pronounced in German) to my ears. It is no wonder that I found nothing with Google. Voytec, it is is not froskur, but frískur.