Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
7 thoughts on “Language quiz”
Well, somebody’s got to make the start: it sounds to my ears like a (Semi-)Bantu language of Central or Southern Africa.
I hear some Spanish in there, so definitely a Central/South-American indigenous language that’s had the inevitable Spanish forced into it over the centuries.
Cheers,
Andrew
I think it’s nontonal, so I’m leaning against the Niger-Congo hypothesis.
I’m sure it really is Niger-Congo, although it didn’t sound like a Bantu language to me. It sounded more like West Africa. I don’t hear any Spanish in this recording, but I’m sure you can hear Spanish in all kinds of languages if you try hard enough!
Daydreamer probably has a better idea than I do, but I’ll try Ewe or Twi for a start…
OK, so it is a Bantu language of central Africa after all: Luganda.
It helped that I looked for “voiced palatal stop” on Wikipedia and found the first word in this recording listed under “Ganda”: jjajja ‘grandfather’!
Self-correction: Apparently, “Central Africa” does not include Uganda, and Uganda is in East Africa. But Daydreamer was definitely (as usual) closer than the rest of us 😉
The answer is Luganda (LùGáà nda), a Bantu language spoken in Uganda.
Well, somebody’s got to make the start: it sounds to my ears like a (Semi-)Bantu language of Central or Southern Africa.
I hear some Spanish in there, so definitely a Central/South-American indigenous language that’s had the inevitable Spanish forced into it over the centuries.
Cheers,
Andrew
I think it’s nontonal, so I’m leaning against the Niger-Congo hypothesis.
I’m sure it really is Niger-Congo, although it didn’t sound like a Bantu language to me. It sounded more like West Africa. I don’t hear any Spanish in this recording, but I’m sure you can hear Spanish in all kinds of languages if you try hard enough!
Daydreamer probably has a better idea than I do, but I’ll try Ewe or Twi for a start…
OK, so it is a Bantu language of central Africa after all: Luganda.
It helped that I looked for “voiced palatal stop” on Wikipedia and found the first word in this recording listed under “Ganda”: jjajja ‘grandfather’!
Self-correction: Apparently, “Central Africa” does not include Uganda, and Uganda is in East Africa. But Daydreamer was definitely (as usual) closer than the rest of us 😉
The answer is Luganda (LùGáà nda), a Bantu language spoken in Uganda.
The recording comes from the GRN.