Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
4 thoughts on “Language quiz”
I recognise this as Kinyarwanda or Kirundi and understand short stretches. Hard to tell the two apart, since they are essentially varieties of one and the same language; there is also the possibility this is Ha, a closely related neighbouring variety in Tanzania. I know nothing about what’s special to Ha, so I have nothing to help me decide if it might be that language. Since hear a /bw/ cluster several times and one of the peculiar features of Kinyarwanda is that it turns /w/ in clusters into [gw] or [g] depending on the preceding consonant (which would make this [bg] in the mouth of a Kinyarwanda speaker), I think that of the two, this is most probably Kirundi.
Damn’. I was just going to say it sounded like some sort of Niger-Congo, maybe Bantu. That won’t win me any price now.
The answer is Ha (Ikiha), a Bantu language spoken in western Tanzania.
I recognise this as Kinyarwanda or Kirundi and understand short stretches. Hard to tell the two apart, since they are essentially varieties of one and the same language; there is also the possibility this is Ha, a closely related neighbouring variety in Tanzania. I know nothing about what’s special to Ha, so I have nothing to help me decide if it might be that language. Since hear a /bw/ cluster several times and one of the peculiar features of Kinyarwanda is that it turns /w/ in clusters into [gw] or [g] depending on the preceding consonant (which would make this [bg] in the mouth of a Kinyarwanda speaker), I think that of the two, this is most probably Kirundi.
Damn’. I was just going to say it sounded like some sort of Niger-Congo, maybe Bantu. That won’t win me any price now.
The answer is Ha (Ikiha), a Bantu language spoken in western Tanzania.
The recording comes from the GRN.
And the obvious reaction is a short laugh!