Here’s a recording featuring Christmas greetings in different languages.
Can you identify the languages? (There are five all together)
Merry Christmas, by the way.
Here’s a recording featuring Christmas greetings in different languages.
Can you identify the languages? (There are five all together)
Merry Christmas, by the way.
last one is chinese i guess
You should be able to find them all in this page: http://www.omniglot.com/language/phrases/christmas.htm
1. Vietnamese
2. Cornish
3. Swedish
4. Kannada
5. Taiwanese
The last one is Taiwanese! Hooray!
My first thoughts
1. Vietnamese (certain)
2. Something Celtic (guessing Welsh or Welshlike)
3. Scandanavian (Swedish or Norwegian)
4. Kannada (or maybe Telugu but definitely Dravidian)
5. Something Chinese
You can hear that the third one is Swedish because the -d of “God” is pronounced. But they are similar — my first thought was Eastern Norwegian reading pronunciation.
/go: ju:L/!
First one is Viet, and the last one Chinese.
I don’t know the others.
Merry Christmas.
2. is Cornish (Nadelik Lowen). The absence of the characteristically Welsh voiceless lateral fricative (Ll) of (Nadolig) ‘Llawen’ gives it away unless of course the recording is of some non-native Welsh or learner who’s mistakenly mutated ‘llawen’ to ‘lawen’?
1. ?
2. ?
3. Danish, Swedish, or Norwegian (I think it’s the same in all three)
4. Turkish?
5. Mandarin
After reading Trond’s comment: I can’t say much about Swedish/Norwegian differences, but “Gud Jul” was one of the few Danish phrases my grandmother remembered from her childhood, and she pronounced the d.
The answers are:
1. Vietnamese (tiếng việt) = Chúc Giáng Sinh Vui Vẻ
2. Cornish (Kernewek) = Nadelik Lowen
3. Swedish (Svenska) = God jul
4. Kannada (ಕನ್ನಡ) = ಕ್ರಿಸ್ ಮಸ್ ಹಬ್ಬದ ಶುಭಾಷಯಗಳು (kris mas habbada shubhaashayagalu)
5. Taiwanese (台語) = 聖誕節快樂 (sing3-tan3-tseh khoai3-lok8)
Petréa: There are dialect differences within Danish, and more so in your grandmother’s day, but I think the standard would be [gu:ð ju:l] ,variants [gu: -], [gu:w -] and [gu:j -]- [gu:d -] as here would be a reading pronunciation — which is perfectly conceivable in what may be a rather literate greeting in origin. Though I’ve been imagining that ‘god jul’ is the old popular greeting, being replaced in modern Danish (and high-end Norwegian) by the literate ‘glæ/edelig jul’ “joyful Christmas”. But either way, it’s clear it’s not Danish from the shifted /u:/ ([ü:]) of ‘jul’.