Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
14 thoughts on “Language quiz”
Sounds like it could be Sardinian?
@joe mock
I was going to say Corsican, so we’re on the same page!
Clearly something related to Italian, but I don’t know much about its relatives.
closely related to Italian – my guess would be more Northern Italy than Southern judging by the stress.
The definite article with s- gives it away – that only happens in balearic catalan and sardinian, as far as I know, and this isn’t catalan.
The voicing of initial s in sempre and santu reminds me of the pronunciation of initial s in German. I don’t speak Italian, but this is not, as far as I am aware, a feature of Standard Italian. An uneducated guess, but it could be from somewhere along the Northern borders, neighbouring a German-speaking region.
In view of the definite article containing a sibilant (as far as I seem to hear), I’m guessing Sardinian, which derived the article from Latin ipse, instead of ille.
Italian dialect, I would guess Corsican or Ligurian.
Definitely one of the dialects of Sardinian, though which I wouldn’t know. The “vergine” and another word with /č/ are probably loans from Italian, since Sardinian itself never palatalised the /k/ before /e/ and /i/, unlike all other Romance languages (thinkg ‘kimbe’ — five — compared to Italian ‘cinque’).
“…‘kimbe’ — five — compared to Italian ‘cinque’”
That’s very interesting, C.M. Is that b an ancient relic from P-Celtic?
on a vaguely related topic – some of you might remember discussing the origin of the ‘p’ in Gaidhlig piuthar? I said it was from the w in the I.E. initial sw-. That does indeed seem to be the case – browsing through a comparative celtic grammar (Pedersen?) I found the Old Irish word for sister was siur which irregularly lenites to fiur – the f being what’s left of the w. Piuthar is then a back formation, but not from sh- as someone suggested.
The answer is Sardinian (Campidanese), a variety of Sardinian spoken in southern Sardinia.
I don’t think the /b/ in ‘kimbe’ has anything to do with Celtic, no. The fact that it developed in Celtic is because labialised (rounded) velars often develop into their corresponding bilabials across languages. That’s why Proto-Indo-European words with labialised /k/ or /g/ regularly developed into /p/ and /b/ in Greek in various environments, and and vulgar Latin *quatru developed into ‘patru’ in Romanian and ‘battoru’ in Sardinian — and the ‘que’ of ‘quinque’ happened to develop into ‘be’ in Sardinian.
Agh, the one time I wait until Tuesday to check the quiz, and it’s a language I could’ve slam-dunked! Anyone who speaks decent Italian and knows what casu marzu* is will, I suspect, hear those “-u” endings and think Sardinian.
BTW Sardinian choral music is wild stuff, well worth checking out for those who haven’t heard it — it astonished Frank Zappa, among others.
Sounds like it could be Sardinian?
@joe mock
I was going to say Corsican, so we’re on the same page!
Clearly something related to Italian, but I don’t know much about its relatives.
closely related to Italian – my guess would be more Northern Italy than Southern judging by the stress.
The definite article with s- gives it away – that only happens in balearic catalan and sardinian, as far as I know, and this isn’t catalan.
The voicing of initial s in sempre and santu reminds me of the pronunciation of initial s in German. I don’t speak Italian, but this is not, as far as I am aware, a feature of Standard Italian. An uneducated guess, but it could be from somewhere along the Northern borders, neighbouring a German-speaking region.
In view of the definite article containing a sibilant (as far as I seem to hear), I’m guessing Sardinian, which derived the article from Latin ipse, instead of ille.
Italian dialect, I would guess Corsican or Ligurian.
Definitely one of the dialects of Sardinian, though which I wouldn’t know. The “vergine” and another word with /č/ are probably loans from Italian, since Sardinian itself never palatalised the /k/ before /e/ and /i/, unlike all other Romance languages (thinkg ‘kimbe’ — five — compared to Italian ‘cinque’).
“…‘kimbe’ — five — compared to Italian ‘cinque’”
That’s very interesting, C.M. Is that b an ancient relic from P-Celtic?
on a vaguely related topic – some of you might remember discussing the origin of the ‘p’ in Gaidhlig piuthar? I said it was from the w in the I.E. initial sw-. That does indeed seem to be the case – browsing through a comparative celtic grammar (Pedersen?) I found the Old Irish word for sister was siur which irregularly lenites to fiur – the f being what’s left of the w. Piuthar is then a back formation, but not from sh- as someone suggested.
The answer is Sardinian (Campidanese), a variety of Sardinian spoken in southern Sardinia.
The recording comes from the GRN.
For David Eger–
I don’t think the /b/ in ‘kimbe’ has anything to do with Celtic, no. The fact that it developed in Celtic is because labialised (rounded) velars often develop into their corresponding bilabials across languages. That’s why Proto-Indo-European words with labialised /k/ or /g/ regularly developed into /p/ and /b/ in Greek in various environments, and and vulgar Latin *quatru developed into ‘patru’ in Romanian and ‘battoru’ in Sardinian — and the ‘que’ of ‘quinque’ happened to develop into ‘be’ in Sardinian.
Agh, the one time I wait until Tuesday to check the quiz, and it’s a language I could’ve slam-dunked! Anyone who speaks decent Italian and knows what casu marzu* is will, I suspect, hear those “-u” endings and think Sardinian.
BTW Sardinian choral music is wild stuff, well worth checking out for those who haven’t heard it — it astonished Frank Zappa, among others.
*(don’t Google that if you value your lunch)