Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
6 thoughts on “Language quiz”
Waray.
Sounds Japonic. Possibly the Rukyuan branch?
Filipino language maybe somewhere in the south:? Visayas or Mindanao?
Like Joe Mock, I also think it sounds like a Philippine language, and not Tagalog/Pilipino. I don’t speak any Philippine languages so I’m just guessing, and using the Wikipedia entries to guide me through the phonology and what grammar I can make out.
It seems to have more initial /ng-/ and final /-g/ than what I generally hear from Tagalog/Pilipino, which made me first think of Cebuano or Ilocano.
0:00 /bisan/: ‘although’
0:07 /para ma ihatag/: ‘for giving’
0:15 /ini nga kanta ko/: ‘this song of mine’
0:17 /kanta ko ha imo/: ‘my song (ha?) yours’
0:20 /makaabot unta/: ‘might be able to reach’
0:26 /kalibutan/: ‘the world’
Since these putative translations seem fairly reasonable for the tone of the song, I am going to guess Cebuano.
It’s definitely not Ilocano -it’s a Visayan dialect – Cebuano or one of the many others – Ilonggo, Waray=Waray etc.
The language is Waray-Waray, a Central Philippine language spoken in parts of the Philippines.
Waray.
Sounds Japonic. Possibly the Rukyuan branch?
Filipino language maybe somewhere in the south:? Visayas or Mindanao?
Like Joe Mock, I also think it sounds like a Philippine language, and not Tagalog/Pilipino. I don’t speak any Philippine languages so I’m just guessing, and using the Wikipedia entries to guide me through the phonology and what grammar I can make out.
It seems to have more initial /ng-/ and final /-g/ than what I generally hear from Tagalog/Pilipino, which made me first think of Cebuano or Ilocano.
Then I looked up whatever words and phrases I thought I heard, translated using this English-Cebuano dictionary (http://www.binisaya.com/) and online grammar (http://www.bohol.ph/books/Jimenez/EnglishBisayaGrammar.html).
0:00 /bisan/: ‘although’
0:07 /para ma ihatag/: ‘for giving’
0:15 /ini nga kanta ko/: ‘this song of mine’
0:17 /kanta ko ha imo/: ‘my song (ha?) yours’
0:20 /makaabot unta/: ‘might be able to reach’
0:26 /kalibutan/: ‘the world’
Since these putative translations seem fairly reasonable for the tone of the song, I am going to guess Cebuano.
It’s definitely not Ilocano -it’s a Visayan dialect – Cebuano or one of the many others – Ilonggo, Waray=Waray etc.
The language is Waray-Waray, a Central Philippine language spoken in parts of the Philippines.
The recording comes from YouTube: