Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
7 thoughts on “Language quiz”
An Iranian dialect/language of some sort?
I’m also thinking it’s an Iranian language, possibly of a former Soviet territory? I think I may have heard something like a Russian borrowing. Are we on the right track?
Yes. It is an Iranian language.
A dialect of Kurdish, perhaps?
I don’t have any training with phonetics, so forgive the vague way I express this, but the vowels in that clip don’t sound like the Persian I’ve heard before (which I assume was fairly standardized urban Persian). I look for a more “rounded”, “aw” sound to vowels if I’m guessing that someone is speaking Persian, and those sounded more “pure” and “clipped”.
If this means anything to anyone, do they know a better, more technically precise way to describe this differnece, and does it actually apply to Persian?
Bokhori ?
The language is Wakhi (x̌ik zik / х̆ик зик), a Southern Pamir language spoken in parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan and China.
An Iranian dialect/language of some sort?
I’m also thinking it’s an Iranian language, possibly of a former Soviet territory? I think I may have heard something like a Russian borrowing. Are we on the right track?
Yes. It is an Iranian language.
A dialect of Kurdish, perhaps?
I don’t have any training with phonetics, so forgive the vague way I express this, but the vowels in that clip don’t sound like the Persian I’ve heard before (which I assume was fairly standardized urban Persian). I look for a more “rounded”, “aw” sound to vowels if I’m guessing that someone is speaking Persian, and those sounded more “pure” and “clipped”.
If this means anything to anyone, do they know a better, more technically precise way to describe this differnece, and does it actually apply to Persian?
Bokhori ?
The language is Wakhi (x̌ik zik / х̆ик зик), a Southern Pamir language spoken in parts of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tajikistan and China.
The recording comes from YouTube.