Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
16 thoughts on “Language quiz”
Sounds like an Indian language.
Afghan or some dravidian language
Some variant of Persian, perhaps Tadjiki.
I second the Persian similarity.
I heard a lot of Persian elements like the -an suffix, “beraber”, “nish”, “doste”, “dar”.
Romany (I’m not sure I’ve got that right. Rom? Romish?)
I couldn’t make out any Arabic words, so I highly doubt it’s any of the Islamicate languages, hence Tajiki is unlikely. I am not really familiar with the languages of India, but since Hindi is heavily laced with Arabic even though it’s not an Islamicate language, I will assume that all of the language communities that were in close contact with the Mughals would have a decent amount of Perso-Arabic words in them. So if it is an Indo-Aryan language, I would speculate that it must come from some area of the sub-continent that was distant or isolated from the traditional centers of power. Here’s my wild guess: some language from Nepal.
hmmm since there was a talk about Pashto … I’d guess it is Pashto …
Brahui, a Dravidian outpost with heavy Persian lexical content as spoken in Balochistan…??
It’s sounds a lot like a couple of my co workers, is it German by any chance?
It’s not German, Brahui, Pashto, Tajik or Romany. This is an Indo-Aryan language.
A wild guess – Kashmiri
Is it, perhaps, Assamese?
Now I get the impression that Simon does not count Romany as an Indo-Aryan language.
This is jammed-packed with retroflex consonants, so it has to be a language of the Indian sub-continent. The intonation sounds more Indo-Aryan than Dravidian, and the ‘sh’ consonant tends to be quite frequent.
So I’d go for something related to Bengali, and guess that this is Sylheti or Assamese.
Wulfahariaz – I suppose my comment could be interpreted like that – but it’s not what I meant.
jimutavahana’s wild guess is correct – it is Kashmiri (कॉशुर / كٲشُر), an Indo-Aryan language spoken mainly in India and Pakistan.
Sounds like an Indian language.
Afghan or some dravidian language
Some variant of Persian, perhaps Tadjiki.
I second the Persian similarity.
I heard a lot of Persian elements like the -an suffix, “beraber”, “nish”, “doste”, “dar”.
Romany (I’m not sure I’ve got that right. Rom? Romish?)
I couldn’t make out any Arabic words, so I highly doubt it’s any of the Islamicate languages, hence Tajiki is unlikely. I am not really familiar with the languages of India, but since Hindi is heavily laced with Arabic even though it’s not an Islamicate language, I will assume that all of the language communities that were in close contact with the Mughals would have a decent amount of Perso-Arabic words in them. So if it is an Indo-Aryan language, I would speculate that it must come from some area of the sub-continent that was distant or isolated from the traditional centers of power. Here’s my wild guess: some language from Nepal.
hmmm since there was a talk about Pashto … I’d guess it is Pashto …
Brahui, a Dravidian outpost with heavy Persian lexical content as spoken in Balochistan…??
It’s sounds a lot like a couple of my co workers, is it German by any chance?
It’s not German, Brahui, Pashto, Tajik or Romany. This is an Indo-Aryan language.
A wild guess – Kashmiri
Is it, perhaps, Assamese?
Now I get the impression that Simon does not count Romany as an Indo-Aryan language.
This is jammed-packed with retroflex consonants, so it has to be a language of the Indian sub-continent. The intonation sounds more Indo-Aryan than Dravidian, and the ‘sh’ consonant tends to be quite frequent.
So I’d go for something related to Bengali, and guess that this is Sylheti or Assamese.
Wulfahariaz – I suppose my comment could be interpreted like that – but it’s not what I meant.
jimutavahana’s wild guess is correct – it is Kashmiri (कॉशुर / كٲشُر), an Indo-Aryan language spoken mainly in India and Pakistan.
The recording comes from the Global Recordings Network.
argh…should’ve gone north-west instead of north-east.