Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
8 thoughts on “Language Quiz”
This is strange… He’s clearly speaking about something related to Bosnia, but it doesn’t sound like any of the varieties of Serbo-Croatian, or any Slavic language at all.
Sounds very close to something like Persian, with endings like -hoi and -asht, but probably not Persian itself. Maybe some dialect from Afghanistan or Tajikistan, but I don’t know which one. Or maybe some kind of Kurdish.
I thought that it may be Albanian, which is spoken not so far from Bosnia, but I heard Albanian many times, and it doesn’t really sound like it. Another possibility I though of is Romany, which is Indo-Iranian, and spoken by many people in the Balkans, but that’s also just a wild guess.
Most likely, something related to Persian.
It sounded very much like Farsi but I thought I heard “shalom shabat” in the middle of things.Could it be Judeo-Persian?
Add me to the “sounds just like Persian” list. Though I’ll mention that the part that sounds like ” shabbat” is preceded by something that sounds like “chamesh”, which is similar to the Hebrew word for “five”, and “shabbat” comes (I believe) from the word for “seven”, so maybe the speaker is just saying some numbers?
Now that I heard it again, the very Russian-sounding “press konferentsiya” (press conference) in the middle makes me think that it’s most likely Tajik. (And I should’ve written “Serbia”, not “Bosnia” in my first comment.)
If it were Tajik, I thought it would have a lot more [o] sounds rather than [a] sounds. Also, the “shabbat” thing doesn’t really do it for me, I don’t think this is particularly Jewish-sounding.
Definitely something in the Greater Persian group of languages, e.g. Farsi, Dari, Tajik. The speaker is talking about Serbia and Belgrade at least at the beginning, and the sort of mix of Persian and Russian phonetics suggests that this would be Tajik. So I’m just going to go with Amir on this one.
I agree that it’s most likely some Persian language, but I’d suggest some deviant variant; is it Tat (zuhun tati)?
The answer is Tajik (тоҷики / toçikī / تاجيكي), a variety of Persian spoken mainly in Tajikistan, and also in Uzbekistan, Kyrghyzstan, China and Kazakhstan.
This is strange… He’s clearly speaking about something related to Bosnia, but it doesn’t sound like any of the varieties of Serbo-Croatian, or any Slavic language at all.
Sounds very close to something like Persian, with endings like -hoi and -asht, but probably not Persian itself. Maybe some dialect from Afghanistan or Tajikistan, but I don’t know which one. Or maybe some kind of Kurdish.
I thought that it may be Albanian, which is spoken not so far from Bosnia, but I heard Albanian many times, and it doesn’t really sound like it. Another possibility I though of is Romany, which is Indo-Iranian, and spoken by many people in the Balkans, but that’s also just a wild guess.
Most likely, something related to Persian.
It sounded very much like Farsi but I thought I heard “shalom shabat” in the middle of things.Could it be Judeo-Persian?
Add me to the “sounds just like Persian” list. Though I’ll mention that the part that sounds like ” shabbat” is preceded by something that sounds like “chamesh”, which is similar to the Hebrew word for “five”, and “shabbat” comes (I believe) from the word for “seven”, so maybe the speaker is just saying some numbers?
Now that I heard it again, the very Russian-sounding “press konferentsiya” (press conference) in the middle makes me think that it’s most likely Tajik. (And I should’ve written “Serbia”, not “Bosnia” in my first comment.)
If it were Tajik, I thought it would have a lot more [o] sounds rather than [a] sounds. Also, the “shabbat” thing doesn’t really do it for me, I don’t think this is particularly Jewish-sounding.
Definitely something in the Greater Persian group of languages, e.g. Farsi, Dari, Tajik. The speaker is talking about Serbia and Belgrade at least at the beginning, and the sort of mix of Persian and Russian phonetics suggests that this would be Tajik. So I’m just going to go with Amir on this one.
I agree that it’s most likely some Persian language, but I’d suggest some deviant variant; is it Tat (zuhun tati)?
The answer is Tajik (тоҷики / toçikī / تاجيكي), a variety of Persian spoken mainly in Tajikistan, and also in Uzbekistan, Kyrghyzstan, China and Kazakhstan.
The recording comes from YouTube: