Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
6 thoughts on “Language quiz”
I think it’s a Moslem text, probably in Arabic or an Arabic-influenced language.
Agreed. It’s full of direct borrowings of Islamic liturgical sayings from Arabic, but the language itself is not closely related to Arabic, I don’t think. It could be in a different branch of Afro-Asiatic (e.g. Afar, Tigrinya, Hausa), or from another family altogether. My hunch is that it’s in Africa though.
Am I on the right track?
This language is spoken in Africa, but isn’t an Afro-Asiatic language – it’s a Nilo-Saharan one.
And what’s saying?
Isabel – I don’t know what the recording means. All I know is what language it is.
The language is Daza(ga) / Gouran, a member of Western Saharan branch of the Nilo-Saharan language family spoken mainly in Chad and Niger.
I think it’s a Moslem text, probably in Arabic or an Arabic-influenced language.
Agreed. It’s full of direct borrowings of Islamic liturgical sayings from Arabic, but the language itself is not closely related to Arabic, I don’t think. It could be in a different branch of Afro-Asiatic (e.g. Afar, Tigrinya, Hausa), or from another family altogether. My hunch is that it’s in Africa though.
Am I on the right track?
This language is spoken in Africa, but isn’t an Afro-Asiatic language – it’s a Nilo-Saharan one.
And what’s saying?
Isabel – I don’t know what the recording means. All I know is what language it is.
The language is Daza(ga) / Gouran, a member of Western Saharan branch of the Nilo-Saharan language family spoken mainly in Chad and Niger.
The recording comes from SoundCloud.