Name the language

Here’s a recording of part of a news report. Do you know or can you guess which language it’s in?

[audio:http://www.omniglot.com/soundfiles/blog/quiz261008.mp3]

13 thoughts on “Name the language

  1. Phew. I really have no clue. Some of the word-initial plosives sound Hindi-esque, but I don’t recognize a shred of the vocabulary, if it’s in the Indic families… so it would have to be one that’s pretty well-separated.

    Man. That’s a tough one.

  2. Kashmiri? (I just guess this time. Northern India at least. The only words I recognised are a name: Kumar Singh).

  3. To my East Asian oriented ears, it almost sounded Korean, though not. I’d guess a South-east Asian language, perhaps Indonesian.

  4. It’s Subcontinental, but from further north than Punjabi, Hindi or Urdu I think. Based on the names and the endings of the words, I’m guessing it’s Nepali.

  5. More words: “Shree”, which is a title of honour in many indian languages and “lokhand”..khand means realm or (spiritual) region in punjabi. But the recording does not sound pure punjabi to me….

  6. Wow. Before I saw the answer I was going to guess one of the Eastern European languages. Nepali is nowhere near what I would have guessed. I’m going to study to be either a physicist or linguist in college, but after this experience I might have to give “linguist” a second look.

  7. Its srilankan ,the abc of which i dont know because iam a tamilian in the indian part tamilnadu.I recognise it as one of the dravidian languages used in the southern parts of the indian sub continent and adjoining islands.

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