Christmas quiz

Here’s a recording featuring Christmas greetings in different languages.

Can you identify the languages? (There are five all together)

Merry Christmas, by the way.

Tinsel

December 25th, 2011 in Language, Quiz questions

Comments (11)

TJDecember 25th, 2011 at 6:11 am

last one is chinese i guess

clDecember 25th, 2011 at 6:41 am

You should be able to find them all in this page: http://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/christmas.htm

1. Vietnamese
2. Cornish
3. Swedish
4. Kannada
5. Taiwanese

AndrewDecember 25th, 2011 at 7:09 am

The last one is Taiwanese! Hooray!

michael farrisDecember 25th, 2011 at 12:20 pm

My first thoughts

1. Vietnamese (certain)
2. Something Celtic (guessing Welsh or Welshlike)
3. Scandanavian (Swedish or Norwegian)
4. Kannada (or maybe Telugu but definitely Dravidian)
5. Something Chinese

Trond EngenDecember 25th, 2011 at 1:18 pm

You can hear that the third one is Swedish because the -d of “God” is pronounced. But they are similar — my first thought was Eastern Norwegian reading pronunciation.

/go: ju:L/!

sdaDecember 25th, 2011 at 3:52 pm

First one is Viet, and the last one Chinese.
I don’t know the others.
Merry Christmas.

YenlitDecember 25th, 2011 at 7:07 pm

2. is Cornish (Nadelik Lowen). The absence of the characteristically Welsh voiceless lateral fricative (Ll) of (Nadolig) ‘Llawen’ gives it away unless of course the recording is of some non-native Welsh or learner who’s mistakenly mutated ‘llawen’ to ‘lawen’?

Petréa MitchellDecember 26th, 2011 at 5:48 pm

1. ?
2. ?
3. Danish, Swedish, or Norwegian (I think it’s the same in all three)
4. Turkish?
5. Mandarin

Petréa MitchellDecember 26th, 2011 at 5:50 pm

After reading Trond’s comment: I can’t say much about Swedish/Norwegian differences, but “Gud Jul” was one of the few Danish phrases my grandmother remembered from her childhood, and she pronounced the d.

SimonDecember 26th, 2011 at 6:08 pm

The answers are:

1. Vietnamese (tiếng việt) = Chúc Giáng Sinh Vui Vẻ
2. Cornish (Kernewek) = Nadelik Lowen
3. Swedish (Svenska) = God jul
4. Kannada (ಕನ್ನಡ) = ಕ್ರಿಸ್ ಮಸ್ ಹಬ್ಬದ ಶುಭಾಷಯಗಳು (kris mas habbada shubhaashayagalu)
5. Taiwanese (台語) = 聖誕節快樂 (sing3-tan3-tseh khoai3-lok8)

Trond EngenDecember 26th, 2011 at 6:32 pm

Petréa: There are dialect differences within Danish, and more so in your grandmother’s day, but I think the standard would be [gu:ð ju:l] ,variants [gu: -], [gu:w -] and [gu:j -]- [gu:d -] as here would be a reading pronunciation — which is perfectly conceivable in what may be a rather literate greeting in origin. Though I’ve been imagining that ‘god jul’ is the old popular greeting, being replaced in modern Danish (and high-end Norwegian) by the literate ‘glæ/edelig jul’ “joyful Christmas”. But either way, it’s clear it’s not Danish from the shifted /u:/ ([ü:]) of ‘jul’.