Do you know or can you guess the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
12 thoughts on “Language Quiz”
It is difficult for me to tell much about a language when It is sung. I hear some vowel sounds that suggest Japanese but then I hear consonant clusters that say otherwise. I checked the Japonic and Koreanic families and see nothing there to back up what I think so maybe it is something from Indonesia? I should say it is “Pacific” based since I am really “at sea” about an answer.
I second Hank’s comment about sung language. To my ear, the style of the music sounds Indian, so maybe the language is from the subcontinent.
Thai?
Are we in a Celtic land?
It sounds like it has a lot of one syllable words, [ɕ] and [ŋ] endings which makes it sound either sino-tibetan, austroasiatic, tai-kadai, or hmong-mien; also the music vaguely makes me think of that region. It sounds virtually indistinguishable from mandarin to my ears so I’m going to guess it’s pretty close to the standard register of mandarin, either a distinct dialect that falls under the mandarin grouping or another close sinitic language
Actually after seeing an above comment I’m thinking maybe the words aren’t monosyllabic but instead that’s just the way they’re spread out over the melody. In that case it sounds like it could be from anywhere in maritime southeast asia, or one of the mainland austronesian languages like cham
Maybe split the difference and guess one of the Austronesian languages from Hainan or Taiwan which are very likely to have sinitic influence
I think I heard some non-Mandarin syllables, so I don’t think that’s it.
All I can hear is the autotune.
Here’s a clue – this language is spoken in east Africa.
The language is Tigrinya (ትግርኛ), an Ethiopic language spoken in the Tigre region of Ethiopia, and in central Eritrea.
It is difficult for me to tell much about a language when It is sung. I hear some vowel sounds that suggest Japanese but then I hear consonant clusters that say otherwise. I checked the Japonic and Koreanic families and see nothing there to back up what I think so maybe it is something from Indonesia? I should say it is “Pacific” based since I am really “at sea” about an answer.
I second Hank’s comment about sung language. To my ear, the style of the music sounds Indian, so maybe the language is from the subcontinent.
Thai?
Are we in a Celtic land?
It sounds like it has a lot of one syllable words, [ɕ] and [ŋ] endings which makes it sound either sino-tibetan, austroasiatic, tai-kadai, or hmong-mien; also the music vaguely makes me think of that region. It sounds virtually indistinguishable from mandarin to my ears so I’m going to guess it’s pretty close to the standard register of mandarin, either a distinct dialect that falls under the mandarin grouping or another close sinitic language
Actually after seeing an above comment I’m thinking maybe the words aren’t monosyllabic but instead that’s just the way they’re spread out over the melody. In that case it sounds like it could be from anywhere in maritime southeast asia, or one of the mainland austronesian languages like cham
Maybe split the difference and guess one of the Austronesian languages from Hainan or Taiwan which are very likely to have sinitic influence
I think I heard some non-Mandarin syllables, so I don’t think that’s it.
All I can hear is the autotune.
Here’s a clue – this language is spoken in east Africa.
The language is Tigrinya (ትግርኛ), an Ethiopic language spoken in the Tigre region of Ethiopia, and in central Eritrea.
The recording comes from YouTube:
A Bantu language, perhaps Kikuyu (Kenya)?