Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
18 thoughts on “Language quiz”
Quality is very bad, but it sounds North Germanic to me. I’m guessing Simon recorded this in Shetland.
I agree very muffled but in my opinion not European but Native American maybe from central American continent.
I know the source and could provide you with a higher quality audio file. However posting a direct link to it here would spoil the fun. 😉
Thanks, I’ve replaced the recording with a better one now.
My ears tell me that it sounds partly like Hungarian. But, since that would be too easy, I go for Khanty, which is closest to Hungarian.
Listening to the better recording now, I’m really in doubt if it’s an Ugric language after all. I wouldn’t exclude Scandinavian languages now; maybe a Swedish dialect spoken by moose? 😉
A dialect of Swedish. I can only make out a few words.
Is it Elfdalian or a Danish dialect?
Some nothern dialect of Swedish. Some form of Westrobothnian maybe? I can understand about half of what he’s saying.
Are there meese in Sweden?
I’ll just say that I knew the recording. For those in need of an extralinguistic hint, he’s talking about logging.
… with a chainsaw, that is, not weblogging or anything.
And for those in need of a linguistic one: ð
I couldn’t understand more than a couple of words, but his breathing gave it away as some sort of Nordic language. My Danish is pretty good, and I can make out a lot of standard Norwegian, and I can even identify standard Swedish (even if I don’t understand much). But beyond that, I give up.
Elfdalian……
I can understand bits and pieces; I feel like it’s Nordic. My wild guess: Faroese (basically because I’ve never heard it spoken before).
The answer is Elfdalian (Övkallmål / Övdalsk), a North Germanic language spoken in the Älvdalen Municipality in Northern Dalarna in central Sweden.
@Christopher: I’m terribly late to the party here, but I would love to know more about about identifying the language family from the breathing! Please explain?
Quality is very bad, but it sounds North Germanic to me. I’m guessing Simon recorded this in Shetland.
I agree very muffled but in my opinion not European but Native American maybe from central American continent.
I know the source and could provide you with a higher quality audio file. However posting a direct link to it here would spoil the fun. 😉
Thanks, I’ve replaced the recording with a better one now.
My ears tell me that it sounds partly like Hungarian. But, since that would be too easy, I go for Khanty, which is closest to Hungarian.
Listening to the better recording now, I’m really in doubt if it’s an Ugric language after all. I wouldn’t exclude Scandinavian languages now; maybe a Swedish dialect spoken by moose? 😉
A dialect of Swedish. I can only make out a few words.
Is it Elfdalian or a Danish dialect?
Some nothern dialect of Swedish. Some form of Westrobothnian maybe? I can understand about half of what he’s saying.
Are there meese in Sweden?
I’ll just say that I knew the recording. For those in need of an extralinguistic hint, he’s talking about logging.
… with a chainsaw, that is, not weblogging or anything.
And for those in need of a linguistic one: ð
I couldn’t understand more than a couple of words, but his breathing gave it away as some sort of Nordic language. My Danish is pretty good, and I can make out a lot of standard Norwegian, and I can even identify standard Swedish (even if I don’t understand much). But beyond that, I give up.
Elfdalian……
I can understand bits and pieces; I feel like it’s Nordic. My wild guess: Faroese (basically because I’ve never heard it spoken before).
The answer is Elfdalian (Övkallmål / Övdalsk), a North Germanic language spoken in the Älvdalen Municipality in Northern Dalarna in central Sweden.
The recording comes from swedia.ling.gu.se.
@Christopher: I’m terribly late to the party here, but I would love to know more about about identifying the language family from the breathing! Please explain?