Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
6 thoughts on “Language quiz”
Chipewyan (Dënesųłiné).
I may be wrong but my nose is sniffling the path to Nez Perce (or another Penutian language in the USA).
Has a Navajo-like set of sounds (including lexical tone, nasalized vowels, velar fricatives, and lateral fricatives), but I know that many languages in the Athabaskan family can be described just like that too. It’s definitely of the Athabaskan family – just can’t be sure how close to Navajo it is.
The only part that’s helping me narrow things down from “Athabaskan” is the fact that I’m hearing several alveolar or retroflex “r” sounds, which do not occur in Navajo or other Southern Athabaskan languages. These Canadian/American English “r”-like sounds occur only in a handful of Northern Athabaskan languages (aside from English loanwords), including:
Chipewyan (Dënesųłiné).
I may be wrong but my nose is sniffling the path to Nez Perce (or another Penutian language in the USA).
Has a Navajo-like set of sounds (including lexical tone, nasalized vowels, velar fricatives, and lateral fricatives), but I know that many languages in the Athabaskan family can be described just like that too. It’s definitely of the Athabaskan family – just can’t be sure how close to Navajo it is.
The only part that’s helping me narrow things down from “Athabaskan” is the fact that I’m hearing several alveolar or retroflex “r” sounds, which do not occur in Navajo or other Southern Athabaskan languages. These Canadian/American English “r”-like sounds occur only in a handful of Northern Athabaskan languages (aside from English loanwords), including:
-Gwich’in / Dinju Zhuh K’yuu
-Hän / Häł gołan
-Kaska / Dene Zágé’
-Dogrib / Tłı̨chǫ Yatıì
-Chipewyan / Dënesųłiné.
So as far as I can tell, these five languages have the exact phoneme inventory we’re looking for – is it one of these?
Yes it is.
The language is Chipewyan (Dënesųłıné / ᑌᓀᓱᐠᑦᕄᓀ), a Northern Athabaskan language spoken in parts of Canada
The recording comes from YouTube: