Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
10 thoughts on “Language quiz”
Singlish?
Parts of it are clearly English, so my guess is that it’s a Caribbean version of English.
Torres Strait Creole?
Definitely an English based creole in a high acrolect, but I don’t know which one. The “another kind” construction may be a clue.
Doesn’t sound Caribbean to me, so I’m going to guess Guyanese Creole.
It looks like something very close to english but i am not sure about the region.
I don’t think it’s Guyanese Creole. Bickerstaff’s description in Bastard Tongues suggests that I’d have expected “a” in a few places in the conversation where it didn’t appear.
The [kaikai] at the end (“big kaikai tonight?”) makes me think of the commonly reduplicated [kai] meaning ‘eat’ in Polynesian languages (and other languages near there), if this is meant to mean something like “big feast tonight?” That makes me think of Tok Pisin, Torres Strait Creole, Bislama, and various other English-based creole languages of the Pacific. But then again, I don’t hear any of the typical function words like [p(e)la] for adjectives and numbers, [blo(ŋ)] for genitive, etc… so I am not sure if I’m in the right area.
The language is Torres-Strait Creole (Yumplatok), an English-based creole spoken in the Torres-Strait islands, northern Australia and Papua New Guinea.
Singlish?
Parts of it are clearly English, so my guess is that it’s a Caribbean version of English.
Torres Strait Creole?
Definitely an English based creole in a high acrolect, but I don’t know which one. The “another kind” construction may be a clue.
Doesn’t sound Caribbean to me, so I’m going to guess Guyanese Creole.
It looks like something very close to english but i am not sure about the region.
I don’t think it’s Guyanese Creole. Bickerstaff’s description in Bastard Tongues suggests that I’d have expected “a” in a few places in the conversation where it didn’t appear.
The [kaikai] at the end (“big kaikai tonight?”) makes me think of the commonly reduplicated [kai] meaning ‘eat’ in Polynesian languages (and other languages near there), if this is meant to mean something like “big feast tonight?” That makes me think of Tok Pisin, Torres Strait Creole, Bislama, and various other English-based creole languages of the Pacific. But then again, I don’t hear any of the typical function words like [p(e)la] for adjectives and numbers, [blo(ŋ)] for genitive, etc… so I am not sure if I’m in the right area.
The language is Torres-Strait Creole (Yumplatok), an English-based creole spoken in the Torres-Strait islands, northern Australia and Papua New Guinea.
The recording comes from YouTube:
Yay! Go me!