17 thoughts on “Language quiz”

1. Hmm, sounds like Bulgarian.

2. Definitely a slavic language. Could very well be Bulgarian like lukas suggests.

3. I will stay with Macedonian

4. Definitely Slavic and has vocabulary very similar to Russian. I don’t think its Macedonian or Bulgarian because I heard самого and высокого which are words in the genitive case and those languages don’t have cases! Although, the speaker did say once, без робота which should have been без роботы in the correct case.

   I guess I would just say Russian, except this is a quiz so it must be tricky. 😉 I’m going to roll with either Ukrainian or Byelorussian.

5. Seems like Bulgarian or Macedonian.

6. I think it’s Macedonian (the word што “what”, postposed definite articles like in земјата); furthermore, I suspect he doesn’t say самого, высокого in fact but rather самово, високово, where -во is just another kind of an attached definite ending. Cf.:

   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macedonian_grammar#Definiteness

7. It’s Macedonian. There is no -во definite article in Bulgarian.

8. It’s Macedonian. I’m Bulgarian and I was once listening to a Macedonian radio in the background for a couple of minutes and thought it was Bulgarian. Here in Bulgaria exists a heated debate whether Macedonian is a different language or just a dialect of Bulgarian. Macedonians insist on the former mainly due to political and nationalistic reasons. However, I’m no expert and may be wrong. As my linguistic knowledge grows bigger I will definitely investigate this matter myself.

9. I was going to say it was Bulgarian because it’s definitely Slavic, and I know the -ta ending exists in Bulgarian. But since Dobri, a native speaker, says it’s not Bulgarian, it must be Macedonian, as the closest language (or dialect…)

10. This is totally unrelated, but you have a bunch of link spam at the bottom of this page… is that intentional?

11. belarusian?

12. Certainly Slavic. I’m going Macedonian, too. Or else Belorussian.

    Also, Simon, in future, could you please provide links to the mp3 files, as well as putting them in that applet (which doesn’t work for me)?

13. South Slavic. There are definite article suffixes, so Bulgarian or Macedonian.

14. slavonic, and more eastern I´d say (I just go on the phonology… can no longer remember any of my Polish or Russian)

15. Bulgarian or Macedonian for sure

16. It *is* ,in fact, Macedonian.

17. The language is indeed Macedonian (македонски) and the recording comes from the BBC World Service.

    Not sure where the spam links came from – somehow they got into the sidebar, but I couldn’t see them on the site. I’ve removed them now.