Do you know or can you guess the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
9 thoughts on “Language Quiz”
It’s certainly Semitic. There are enough glottal stops to suggest to me (why, I don’t now) that it’s a form of Aramaic.
It started off sounding similar to Arabic, but ended up more similar to Persian, so I’m going with “related to Persian”.
It sounds like Georgian but that’s too widely spoken for these quizzes so I’m going to say Mingrelian, Laz or Svan
That\’s a tough one but I\’d say it\’s Afro-Asiatic. The phonology, I think, features pharyngeal and ejective consonants, including /ts\’/, which suggests either a South Semitic, perhaps Ethiopic language (such as Tigrinya), or a Cushitic language (such as Tsamai). I wouldn\’t bet on it, though!
Yup, I’m with Emanuel on this one! (minus the backslashes ;))
I agree in part with CDK but it is not a South-Caucasian or Kartvelian (Georgian, Laz…) language. It is Kaitag, a North-Caucasian divergent dialect of the Dargwa or Dargin language although soma linguists consider it as an independent language. The speaker is saying some about the languages spoken in that area…Aghul , Qumuq (Kumyk) etc…it is spoken in Daghestan.
I heard /ʃa ‘la:m/ twice near the beginning, which suggests to me that if it’s not Afro-Asiatic, it was influenced by Arabic and probably comes from an Islamic culture.
1. Sorry for these backslashes: they pop up preceding apostrophes – but only after posting my comment – and I do not know where they come from.
2. Having heard pharyngeals in the recording, I jumped to an Afro-Asiatic conclusion, forgetting that some Caucasian languages also feature them!
The language is Kaitag (хайдакьан гъай), a member of the Dargin branch of the Northeast Caucasian language family spoken in Dagestan in the Russian Federation.
It’s certainly Semitic. There are enough glottal stops to suggest to me (why, I don’t now) that it’s a form of Aramaic.
It started off sounding similar to Arabic, but ended up more similar to Persian, so I’m going with “related to Persian”.
It sounds like Georgian but that’s too widely spoken for these quizzes so I’m going to say Mingrelian, Laz or Svan
That\’s a tough one but I\’d say it\’s Afro-Asiatic. The phonology, I think, features pharyngeal and ejective consonants, including /ts\’/, which suggests either a South Semitic, perhaps Ethiopic language (such as Tigrinya), or a Cushitic language (such as Tsamai). I wouldn\’t bet on it, though!
Yup, I’m with Emanuel on this one! (minus the backslashes ;))
I agree in part with CDK but it is not a South-Caucasian or Kartvelian (Georgian, Laz…) language. It is Kaitag, a North-Caucasian divergent dialect of the Dargwa or Dargin language although soma linguists consider it as an independent language. The speaker is saying some about the languages spoken in that area…Aghul , Qumuq (Kumyk) etc…it is spoken in Daghestan.
I heard /ʃa ‘la:m/ twice near the beginning, which suggests to me that if it’s not Afro-Asiatic, it was influenced by Arabic and probably comes from an Islamic culture.
1. Sorry for these backslashes: they pop up preceding apostrophes – but only after posting my comment – and I do not know where they come from.
2. Having heard pharyngeals in the recording, I jumped to an Afro-Asiatic conclusion, forgetting that some Caucasian languages also feature them!
The language is Kaitag (хайдакьан гъай), a member of the Dargin branch of the Northeast Caucasian language family spoken in Dagestan in the Russian Federation.
The recording comes from YouTube