Name the language

Here’s a recording of part of a news report. Do you know or can you guess which language it’s in?

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October 26th, 2008 in Language, Quiz questions

Comments (13)

CaspOctober 26th, 2008 at 4:29 pm

I’d guess it’s one of the Indian Indo-european languages

AROctober 26th, 2008 at 4:51 pm

Nepali?

JRiceOctober 26th, 2008 at 5:35 pm

Phew. I really have no clue. Some of the word-initial plosives sound Hindi-esque, but I don’t recognize a shred of the vocabulary, if it’s in the Indic families… so it would have to be one that’s pretty well-separated.

Man. That’s a tough one.

peter j. frankeOctober 26th, 2008 at 9:01 pm

Kashmiri? (I just guess this time. Northern India at least. The only words I recognised are a name: Kumar Singh).

pavelOctober 26th, 2008 at 9:59 pm

I think it’s Punjabi.

lukasOctober 26th, 2008 at 10:50 pm

Sounds vaguely Indian… Punjabi, or maybe Sindhi?

DanielOctober 27th, 2008 at 12:31 am

To my East Asian oriented ears, it almost sounded Korean, though not. I’d guess a South-east Asian language, perhaps Indonesian.

xarxaOctober 27th, 2008 at 1:01 am

without looking at the other comments, nepali?

NadiaOctober 27th, 2008 at 4:07 am

It’s Subcontinental, but from further north than Punjabi, Hindi or Urdu I think. Based on the names and the endings of the words, I’m guessing it’s Nepali.

peter j. frankeOctober 27th, 2008 at 1:55 pm

More words: “Shree”, which is a title of honour in many indian languages and “lokhand”..khand means realm or (spiritual) region in punjabi. But the recording does not sound pure punjabi to me….

SimonOctober 27th, 2008 at 10:31 pm

The language is Nepali and the recording comes from Radio Nepal.

AlexOctober 29th, 2008 at 11:51 pm

Wow. Before I saw the answer I was going to guess one of the Eastern European languages. Nepali is nowhere near what I would have guessed. I’m going to study to be either a physicist or linguist in college, but after this experience I might have to give “linguist” a second look.

BALAGANESH SUBRAMANIANNovember 6th, 2008 at 9:52 pm

Its srilankan ,the abc of which i dont know because iam a tamilian in the indian part tamilnadu.I recognise it as one of the dravidian languages used in the southern parts of the indian sub continent and adjoining islands.