Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
13 thoughts on “Language quiz”
Seems to be influenced strongly by Italian. Maybe Sardinian?
There’s something about a sound like a “deep” ah that makes me think it is somehow kin to Farsi. The music that i THINK I hear in the background also sounds middle-eastern. Could it be Kurdish?
Russian?
Partly Italian, partly not at all. Going to guess Maltese.
I don’t know if that’s considered cheating, but I found another recording of people speaking Maltese, and I think there are some very prominent consonant sounds which are lacking entirely in the above recording. So I don’t think that’s it.
I hope it doesn’t count as cheating, but I listened to another recording of Maltese, and it doesn’t sound like the above. Maltese seems to have some glottal sounds and some other consonant sounds that are entirely missing here.
Italian bits then something that does sound slightly Slavic – one of the Slovenian dialects in in the border area?
I can’t shake the feeling that it’s rhythm seems similar to Finnish, and maybe for that reason I’d say it sounds agglutanitive (or any other system that promotes long words).
There’s a lot of [ʃ] and [s] but a fair few stops, and they’re (mostly) unaspirated as far as I can tell. So maybe they are distinguished by voicing.
Most vowels sounded like back vowels, and I’m sure I heard some [w] glides.
The rhotic appears tapped [ɾ] and the L has to be velarized [ɫ] or I have some hearing trouble.
I’m really not sure if it’s possible to tell, considering I’m an amateur, but I don’t think this one has tonality.
At least in this recording there was no [f] or [v], so maybe those are rare in that language.
The vowels and consonants seem to be a tabout a 50/50 rating, maybe slightly more vowels.
All things considered, I listened to a couple of other languages just now, and the closest I could find was the Niger-Congo tree. I’m not gonna guess a particular language, but I’m (almost) sure it’s not Swahili.
Arth – it isn’t related to Finnish, but is spoken not far from Finland.
Lithuanian?
Simon, a big hint. It seems too Russian-influenced to be Estonian, so I would guess Komi.
Greg, he said not related to Finnish.
The answer is Latgalian (latgalīšu volūda), a Baltic language spoken in eastern Latvia.
Seems to be influenced strongly by Italian. Maybe Sardinian?
There’s something about a sound like a “deep” ah that makes me think it is somehow kin to Farsi. The music that i THINK I hear in the background also sounds middle-eastern. Could it be Kurdish?
Russian?
Partly Italian, partly not at all. Going to guess Maltese.
I don’t know if that’s considered cheating, but I found another recording of people speaking Maltese, and I think there are some very prominent consonant sounds which are lacking entirely in the above recording. So I don’t think that’s it.
I hope it doesn’t count as cheating, but I listened to another recording of Maltese, and it doesn’t sound like the above. Maltese seems to have some glottal sounds and some other consonant sounds that are entirely missing here.
Italian bits then something that does sound slightly Slavic – one of the Slovenian dialects in in the border area?
I can’t shake the feeling that it’s rhythm seems similar to Finnish, and maybe for that reason I’d say it sounds agglutanitive (or any other system that promotes long words).
There’s a lot of [ʃ] and [s] but a fair few stops, and they’re (mostly) unaspirated as far as I can tell. So maybe they are distinguished by voicing.
Most vowels sounded like back vowels, and I’m sure I heard some [w] glides.
The rhotic appears tapped [ɾ] and the L has to be velarized [ɫ] or I have some hearing trouble.
I’m really not sure if it’s possible to tell, considering I’m an amateur, but I don’t think this one has tonality.
At least in this recording there was no [f] or [v], so maybe those are rare in that language.
The vowels and consonants seem to be a tabout a 50/50 rating, maybe slightly more vowels.
All things considered, I listened to a couple of other languages just now, and the closest I could find was the Niger-Congo tree. I’m not gonna guess a particular language, but I’m (almost) sure it’s not Swahili.
Arth – it isn’t related to Finnish, but is spoken not far from Finland.
Lithuanian?
Simon, a big hint. It seems too Russian-influenced to be Estonian, so I would guess Komi.
Greg, he said not related to Finnish.
The answer is Latgalian (latgalīšu volūda), a Baltic language spoken in eastern Latvia.
The recording comes from YouTube: