Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
15 thoughts on “Language quiz”
Syriac.
Assyrian the type spoken in Iraq
In Syria god is Aloho, here he is clearly saying ALAHA, plus the accent of the speaker is clearly Iraqi.
What do we win? 🙂
I was going to say that this sounds like a Christian text in a Semitic language, so probably liturgic Aramaic, i.e. Syriac. Since I was beaten to it, I should come up with something else for sports, but they seem to know what they’re talking about.
I know how to write the word “Alaha” in Estrangelo but anyway, I don’t know the variation of vowels between Assyrian and Syriac. Anyway, both of them emerge of a single entity I guess, Aramaic.
so its not yemeni arabic?
If it is, I’ll regret not having tried to come up with something else.
No I don’t think it’s Yemeni Arabic.
I agree it’s probably Syriac. I hear what sounds like shmayyaa (heaven) twice (though I may of course just be mis-parsing the phonetic stream), besides the Aalahaa and saTaana. As for an Iraqi accent, all I can really tell is that the speaker often has dark, velarised /l/s (but notably, not in Aalahaa: the opposite of most Arabic dialects, where Allaah universally has emphatic /l/ but otherwise, most dialects don’t except for Iraqi and Gulf dialects).
Question: is “emphatic /l/” the same as “liquid L” ?
“Emphatic” when used to describe Semitic and some other Afroasiatic languages refers to consonants with a secondary guttural articulation. It can be glottalisation as in Ethiopian Semitic languages (cf. their ejectives) or the combined velar-pharyngeal secondary articulation of Arabic. For /l/, it gives the “dark” sound of most English varieties when it is pronounced syllable- or word-finally. So that’s basically the meaning of “emphatic” here. “Liquid” is just the general category of sonorant sounds in which the airflow in the mouth is shaped but not obstructed, excluding the semivowels, so [R], [r] and [l], to give the main representatives of the class.
Not sure if it’s Syriac per se, but it is definitely a modern Aramaic dialect. Maybe Ma`lula?
The answer is Chaldean Neo-Aramaic (ܟܠܕܝܐ), a semitic language spoken in Iraq, Iran and Turkey.
Does the Estrangelo here read as “Nalma” ?
The font is so small.
““Emphatic” when used to describe Semitic and some other Afroasiatic languages refers to consonants with a secondary guttural articulation. It can be glottalisation as in Ethiopian Semitic languages (cf. their ejectives) or the combined velar-pharyngeal secondary articulation of Arabic.”
Technically the way I perceive ’emphatic’ consonants in different varieties of Arabic very differently. For most varieties there’s an audible tension but for Tunisian Arabic the “emphatic” consonants, if anything, sound less emphatic then the unmarked consonants. I’d almost call them ‘smooth’ consonants. Just my perception.
Syriac.
Assyrian the type spoken in Iraq
In Syria god is Aloho, here he is clearly saying ALAHA, plus the accent of the speaker is clearly Iraqi.
What do we win? 🙂
I was going to say that this sounds like a Christian text in a Semitic language, so probably liturgic Aramaic, i.e. Syriac. Since I was beaten to it, I should come up with something else for sports, but they seem to know what they’re talking about.
I know how to write the word “Alaha” in Estrangelo but anyway, I don’t know the variation of vowels between Assyrian and Syriac. Anyway, both of them emerge of a single entity I guess, Aramaic.
so its not yemeni arabic?
If it is, I’ll regret not having tried to come up with something else.
No I don’t think it’s Yemeni Arabic.
I agree it’s probably Syriac. I hear what sounds like shmayyaa (heaven) twice (though I may of course just be mis-parsing the phonetic stream), besides the Aalahaa and saTaana. As for an Iraqi accent, all I can really tell is that the speaker often has dark, velarised /l/s (but notably, not in Aalahaa: the opposite of most Arabic dialects, where Allaah universally has emphatic /l/ but otherwise, most dialects don’t except for Iraqi and Gulf dialects).
Question: is “emphatic /l/” the same as “liquid L” ?
“Emphatic” when used to describe Semitic and some other Afroasiatic languages refers to consonants with a secondary guttural articulation. It can be glottalisation as in Ethiopian Semitic languages (cf. their ejectives) or the combined velar-pharyngeal secondary articulation of Arabic. For /l/, it gives the “dark” sound of most English varieties when it is pronounced syllable- or word-finally. So that’s basically the meaning of “emphatic” here. “Liquid” is just the general category of sonorant sounds in which the airflow in the mouth is shaped but not obstructed, excluding the semivowels, so [R], [r] and [l], to give the main representatives of the class.
Not sure if it’s Syriac per se, but it is definitely a modern Aramaic dialect. Maybe Ma`lula?
The answer is Chaldean Neo-Aramaic (ܟܠܕܝܐ), a semitic language spoken in Iraq, Iran and Turkey.
The recording comes from the Global Recordings Network.
Does the Estrangelo here read as “Nalma” ?
The font is so small.
““Emphatic” when used to describe Semitic and some other Afroasiatic languages refers to consonants with a secondary guttural articulation. It can be glottalisation as in Ethiopian Semitic languages (cf. their ejectives) or the combined velar-pharyngeal secondary articulation of Arabic.”
Technically the way I perceive ’emphatic’ consonants in different varieties of Arabic very differently. For most varieties there’s an audible tension but for Tunisian Arabic the “emphatic” consonants, if anything, sound less emphatic then the unmarked consonants. I’d almost call them ‘smooth’ consonants. Just my perception.
i would say it is Syriac for shore