7 thoughts on “Language quiz

  1. Well, somebody’s got to make the start: it sounds to my ears like a (Semi-)Bantu language of Central or Southern Africa.

  2. I hear some Spanish in there, so definitely a Central/South-American indigenous language that’s had the inevitable Spanish forced into it over the centuries.

    Cheers,
    Andrew

  3. I think it’s nontonal, so I’m leaning against the Niger-Congo hypothesis.

  4. I’m sure it really is Niger-Congo, although it didn’t sound like a Bantu language to me. It sounded more like West Africa. I don’t hear any Spanish in this recording, but I’m sure you can hear Spanish in all kinds of languages if you try hard enough!

    Daydreamer probably has a better idea than I do, but I’ll try Ewe or Twi for a start…

  5. OK, so it is a Bantu language of central Africa after all: Luganda.

    It helped that I looked for “voiced palatal stop” on Wikipedia and found the first word in this recording listed under “Ganda”: jjajja ‘grandfather’!

  6. Self-correction: Apparently, “Central Africa” does not include Uganda, and Uganda is in East Africa. But Daydreamer was definitely (as usual) closer than the rest of us 😉

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