Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
10 thoughts on “Language Quiz”
There’s something about the timbre of the voice as well as a few sounds that make me think it is from the Indian subcontinent but I can’t be sure. Oddly enough, when I hear people on here talking I try to picture in my mind what they look like. That sometimes helps on what I decide as to the language family. Just an odd habit I have!
I’m pretty sure I’ve heard this shouting before in a sample of Huli, from Hela Province in Papua New Guinea
I just checked on Huli and they had a man telling the story of the Prodigal Son. It s certainly sounds like the very same recording.
It isn’t Huli – try a different continent and language family.
I think I hear some reduplication.
This language also appears to have /gʷ/, /ɲ/ and /λ/. We do not have enough information to determine whether these are phonemic or allophonic.
If it’s not from the Australian continent then I think it’s Niger-Congo, and I don’t think it’s Bantu because Bantu languages tend to have simpler syllable structure. No idea more specific than non-Bantu Niger-Congo
Or it could be Nilo-Saharan
It’s something from either West Africa or the Sahel, geographically sandwiched between Bantu and Semitic and Amazigh
Apparently it is an African language but I don’t know which one.
The answer is Turkana (ŋa-tùrkwanà), an Eastern Nilotic language spoken mainly in Turkana County in the northwest of Kenya.
There’s something about the timbre of the voice as well as a few sounds that make me think it is from the Indian subcontinent but I can’t be sure. Oddly enough, when I hear people on here talking I try to picture in my mind what they look like. That sometimes helps on what I decide as to the language family. Just an odd habit I have!
I’m pretty sure I’ve heard this shouting before in a sample of Huli, from Hela Province in Papua New Guinea
I just checked on Huli and they had a man telling the story of the Prodigal Son. It s certainly sounds like the very same recording.
It isn’t Huli – try a different continent and language family.
I think I hear some reduplication.
This language also appears to have /gʷ/, /ɲ/ and /λ/. We do not have enough information to determine whether these are phonemic or allophonic.
If it’s not from the Australian continent then I think it’s Niger-Congo, and I don’t think it’s Bantu because Bantu languages tend to have simpler syllable structure. No idea more specific than non-Bantu Niger-Congo
Or it could be Nilo-Saharan
It’s something from either West Africa or the Sahel, geographically sandwiched between Bantu and Semitic and Amazigh
Apparently it is an African language but I don’t know which one.
The answer is Turkana (ŋa-tùrkwanà), an Eastern Nilotic language spoken mainly in Turkana County in the northwest of Kenya.
The recording comes from YouTube: