Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
8 thoughts on “Language quiz”
With no expertise in African Languages it sound a little like Mandingo or at least in the vicinity of Senegal.
I’m not sure, but I think the content relates to Islam.
Don’t know what it’s all about, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a Nilo-Saharan language like Maasai, spoken in Kenya and Tanzania.
I think I listened to this pretty much as soon as Simon put it up. I was thinking along Daydreamer’s lines that it might be a Nilo-Saharan language. I don’t think it’s Mandinka or Masai because neither of those languages seems to have the nasalized vowels that we hear in this recording. I thought maybe it was a Songhai language, but that doesn’t seem to be right, either. I also don’t think the content has anything to do with Islam. Dan is presumably picking up on the repetition of [ala], but I think this is probably from the Global Recordings Network (the clips Simon uses usually are!). The [ala] may not have anything to do with “Allah” at all, but even if it does, I think people who have “Allah” in their daily vocabulary use it even when they’re not talking about Islam (and probably even if they’re not Muslim).
I’m going to try Soninke, mainly spoken in Mali with speakers also in Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, the Gambia, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea and Ghana.
It is a Nilo-Saharan, though none of the ones already mentioned.
The answer is Kanuri, a Nilo-Saharan language spoken in Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon.
With no expertise in African Languages it sound a little like Mandingo or at least in the vicinity of Senegal.
I’m not sure, but I think the content relates to Islam.
Don’t know what it’s all about, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a Nilo-Saharan language like Maasai, spoken in Kenya and Tanzania.
I think I listened to this pretty much as soon as Simon put it up. I was thinking along Daydreamer’s lines that it might be a Nilo-Saharan language. I don’t think it’s Mandinka or Masai because neither of those languages seems to have the nasalized vowels that we hear in this recording. I thought maybe it was a Songhai language, but that doesn’t seem to be right, either. I also don’t think the content has anything to do with Islam. Dan is presumably picking up on the repetition of [ala], but I think this is probably from the Global Recordings Network (the clips Simon uses usually are!). The [ala] may not have anything to do with “Allah” at all, but even if it does, I think people who have “Allah” in their daily vocabulary use it even when they’re not talking about Islam (and probably even if they’re not Muslim).
I’m going to try Soninke, mainly spoken in Mali with speakers also in Senegal, Guinea-Bissau, the Gambia, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea and Ghana.
It is a Nilo-Saharan, though none of the ones already mentioned.
The answer is Kanuri, a Nilo-Saharan language spoken in Nigeria, Niger, Chad and Cameroon.
The recording comes from the GRN (4. Noah)
I also heard something that sounded like [kuran].