Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
7 thoughts on “Language quiz”
Another Finnic language but can’t say which one.
I was going to post a guess of “Indo-European”, as that was only as definite as I was willing to be, but if Rauli is right I’m not even correct about that.
Livonian? I recognise some of the phonology – and possibly a few loans – from Latvian. I also hear a few lexical/morphpological similarities with Estonian.
@Jonathan: If my guess is correct, then misidentifying it as Indo-European would be understandable, as it sounds like it has considerable phonological influence from Latvian.
So would Livonian be structurally Uralic but phonologically (influenced) by Indo-European? That would be interesting.
@Jonathan: I don’t know a great deal about the language, but I imagine that it has at least some phonetic influence from its dominant neighbouring language (and this appears to be borne out in the recording, if my guess is correct). Looking at the Livonian alphabet http://www.omniglot.com/writing/livonian.htm gives the impression that it has a more complex consonant inventory than Estonian and Finnish – one that resembles those of the Balto-Slavic languages.
I don’t think Livonian is alone in being a Uralic language with Indo-European phonetic/phonological influence – from the little I have heard of them, the Finnic languages spoken within Russia, sound quite ‘Russian’ in their phonology to me.
The language is Livonian (Līvõ kēļ), a Finnic language spoken in northern Latvia.
Another Finnic language but can’t say which one.
I was going to post a guess of “Indo-European”, as that was only as definite as I was willing to be, but if Rauli is right I’m not even correct about that.
Livonian? I recognise some of the phonology – and possibly a few loans – from Latvian. I also hear a few lexical/morphpological similarities with Estonian.
@Jonathan: If my guess is correct, then misidentifying it as Indo-European would be understandable, as it sounds like it has considerable phonological influence from Latvian.
So would Livonian be structurally Uralic but phonologically (influenced) by Indo-European? That would be interesting.
@Jonathan: I don’t know a great deal about the language, but I imagine that it has at least some phonetic influence from its dominant neighbouring language (and this appears to be borne out in the recording, if my guess is correct). Looking at the Livonian alphabet http://www.omniglot.com/writing/livonian.htm gives the impression that it has a more complex consonant inventory than Estonian and Finnish – one that resembles those of the Balto-Slavic languages.
I don’t think Livonian is alone in being a Uralic language with Indo-European phonetic/phonological influence – from the little I have heard of them, the Finnic languages spoken within Russia, sound quite ‘Russian’ in their phonology to me.
The language is Livonian (Līvõ kēļ), a Finnic language spoken in northern Latvia.
The recording comes from YouTube.