Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
5 thoughts on “Language quiz”
Tamang (तामाङ).
Thanks to lots of phonological similarity to + lexical cognates with my family’s language, I think I have (something close to) the answer! But I’ll wait since I want others to have a chance. 🙂
Well, no one has stepped up… is it either Nepali or Marathi?
Sounds like it starts with भाषाको लागि […bʱasa-ko lagi], which would mean ‘for language’ in Nepali, and there are words like समस्या [sʌmʌsja] ‘problem’, एकदम [ekd̪ʌm] ‘totally’, सम्झौता [sʌmdzʱawt̪a] ‘(an) understanding’, etc. These words all have cognates across the Indic languages (e.g. they are সমস্যা [ʃɔmoʃːa], একদম [ɛkd̪ɔm], and সমঝোতা [ʃɔmdʑʱot̪a] in Bengali), so it could be another language… but to me, the presence of alveolar affricates [ts tsʰ dz dzʱ] signals either Nepali or Marathi, as most other Indic languages have palatalized affricates like [tʃ tʃʰ dʒ dʒʱ], [tɕ tɕʰ dʑ dʑʱ], or [c cʰ ɟ ɟʱ] instead of [ts tsʰ dz dzʱ]. Plus, both Nepali and Marathi use [ʌ] for the inherent vowel, rather that the fronter [ə] of Hindi-Urdu and Punjabi to the west or rounder [ɔ] of Bengali and Assamese to the east.
The language is Tamang (तामाङ, རྟ་དམག་ / རྟ་མང་), a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Nepal, India and Bhutan.
Wow! I had figured that all the non-Nepali stretches in there indicated that this was a language closely related to Nepali. I hadn’t considered that it might be a non-Indic language that *borrowed* so much from Nepali! Those are whole syntactic phrases she’s taking from Nepali! Very cool.
Tamang (तामाङ).
Thanks to lots of phonological similarity to + lexical cognates with my family’s language, I think I have (something close to) the answer! But I’ll wait since I want others to have a chance. 🙂
Well, no one has stepped up… is it either Nepali or Marathi?
Sounds like it starts with भाषाको लागि […bʱasa-ko lagi], which would mean ‘for language’ in Nepali, and there are words like समस्या [sʌmʌsja] ‘problem’, एकदम [ekd̪ʌm] ‘totally’, सम्झौता [sʌmdzʱawt̪a] ‘(an) understanding’, etc. These words all have cognates across the Indic languages (e.g. they are সমস্যা [ʃɔmoʃːa], একদম [ɛkd̪ɔm], and সমঝোতা [ʃɔmdʑʱot̪a] in Bengali), so it could be another language… but to me, the presence of alveolar affricates [ts tsʰ dz dzʱ] signals either Nepali or Marathi, as most other Indic languages have palatalized affricates like [tʃ tʃʰ dʒ dʒʱ], [tɕ tɕʰ dʑ dʑʱ], or [c cʰ ɟ ɟʱ] instead of [ts tsʰ dz dzʱ]. Plus, both Nepali and Marathi use [ʌ] for the inherent vowel, rather that the fronter [ə] of Hindi-Urdu and Punjabi to the west or rounder [ɔ] of Bengali and Assamese to the east.
The language is Tamang (तामाङ, རྟ་དམག་ / རྟ་མང་), a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in Nepal, India and Bhutan.
The recording comes from YouTube.
Wow! I had figured that all the non-Nepali stretches in there indicated that this was a language closely related to Nepali. I hadn’t considered that it might be a non-Indic language that *borrowed* so much from Nepali! Those are whole syntactic phrases she’s taking from Nepali! Very cool.