Can you identify the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?
6 thoughts on “Language quiz”
It sounds closely related to Malay. My first guess would be a Sumatran language (Acehnese? Lampung?), perhaps even Sundanese in Java, especially given the [ø] vowels (spelled in Indonesian orthography).
Actually, the vowel I spelled as [ø] is actually not a rounded tense mid-front vowel (as per that phonetic symbol) but the high back tense unrounded vowel [ɯ].
I’d go with your guess. Not sure whether this is from GRN this time, though!
Sundanese was a possibility that came to me, too. I guess that’s what I’ll go with for now…
Ha ha! I see I forgot about what happens when you put something between angled brackets: it gets treated as HTML and hidden!
I had meant (but did not have the small guillemets on my iPad when writing my first post) to write “spelled ‹eu› in Indonesian orthography”.
Ooops! Sorry, Chris. We were so close!
It’s Madurese.
The answer is Madurese (Madhura / Basa Mathura / بَهاسَ مَدورا), an Malayo-Sumbawan language spoken by about 14 million people mainly in Madura Island and eastern Java in Indonesia,
It sounds closely related to Malay. My first guess would be a Sumatran language (Acehnese? Lampung?), perhaps even Sundanese in Java, especially given the [ø] vowels (spelled in Indonesian orthography).
Actually, the vowel I spelled as [ø] is actually not a rounded tense mid-front vowel (as per that phonetic symbol) but the high back tense unrounded vowel [ɯ].
I’d go with your guess. Not sure whether this is from GRN this time, though!
Sundanese was a possibility that came to me, too. I guess that’s what I’ll go with for now…
Ha ha! I see I forgot about what happens when you put something between angled brackets: it gets treated as HTML and hidden!
I had meant (but did not have the small guillemets on my iPad when writing my first post) to write “spelled ‹eu› in Indonesian orthography”.
Ooops! Sorry, Chris. We were so close!
It’s Madurese.
The answer is Madurese (Madhura / Basa Mathura / بَهاسَ مَدورا), an Malayo-Sumbawan language spoken by about 14 million people mainly in Madura Island and eastern Java in Indonesia,
The recording comes from YouTube.