Guess the language!

[pne]

Here, download this MP3 clip (663 kB) and try to guess what language it is, or to transcribe it! (From Language Log.)

Comments

[pthalo]

La Škola .... paakt de magazine. ... individuaal ... modell na škola in modell ... habilitaats... toleraant ... planned instrukciun ... instrukcion de religion ...

My first guess is Afrikaans. Second guess is Dutch.

[pne.livejournal.com]

I think "paakt" is "part" with a uvular [R] (as in, say, French or German).

[angharad.livejournal.com]

I heard all those words, and the problem is that they're all latinate. I couldn't hear any familiar verbs or articles, which surely we would in Dutch? Therefore, my guess was "Esperanto or Romanian".

[angharad.livejournal.com]

I lied. "la sjkola" has a "la", which is why I would not have said Dutch.

[angharad.livejournal.com]

And "el plan de instruccion". That's gotta be an elision there, and not "planned instruccion".
And the "cuidet" which is latin. And the Italian rhythms.

(Can you tell I'm listening repeatedly?)

[pne.livejournal.com]

All your hints are getting pretty close to what I think the language may be :)

[angharad.livejournal.com]

Oh Man. In the shower just now I weighed the likelihood of any major European nation not being immediately recognised by their scholarly readers. They're going to pick something else. I now have another guess. It also starts with R.

[gragathaz.livejournal.com]

I'm lurching toward Romanian as the most likely candidate, myself. It has Latinate vocabulary but sounds Slavic, which is (in my meagre experience) a pointer to Romanian. I can assert, though, that it is definitely not Dutch, as a native Dutch-speaker has told me that she couldn't recognise any Dutch in it!

[ubykhlives.livejournal.com]

I agree; it's definitely not Dutch, and I think it's probably Romanian. Romance vocabulary, Slavic phonology: la škola turned up a couple of times. Either that, or pne has played a huge joke on us all with a sound clip of Dalmatian. :)

[angharad.livejournal.com]

I'm totally going to end up being right (see more in my entry), though. We have to look up how to tell audibly and transcriptionally between "this" and Romanian.

I'll take the mystery language for 1000

[ubykhlives.livejournal.com]

I've finally got it. I know I have! And I didn't use the big neon hints to get it. :D

I knew I'd heard an alveolar affricate in the word magazine, but I'd thought it was Slavic influence. Now I know what it is, and it's not Slavic. :P

Re: I'll take the mystery language for 1000

[angharad.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that tends to make me think "Slavic" too.

R

[pne.livejournal.com]

We may be thinking of the same language, then.

[marikochan.livejournal.com]

(Without looking at the other comments.) To me it sounds like a combination of French and German, but that's probably because those are the only European languages I've studied (and I don't know either very well).

[angharad.livejournal.com]

Intriguing! All the Alsace-Lorraine folks I've heard, though, just have weirdo heavy accents, in a recognisable language.

[angharad.livejournal.com]

I wish we knew whether it was a living language. Semi-living languages (like Occitan) might have similar articles.

[nik-w.livejournal.com]

Not sure what the language is, but the speaker sounds like they have a Welsh accent! The words don't sound Welsh, though - some of them sound almost Italian. Curious... I'm thinking eastern-european purely because it does sound vaguely european, but because it doesn't seem to fit into any other area I can think of - it doesn't sound like Russian, Greek, or Spanish. I've heard Romanian spoken and it's not that. My immediate guess would be something like Czech or Slovakian.

[nik-w.livejournal.com]

Having asked around, I am going to say it's Portuguese spoken with an Eastern European accent of some variety - not Russian or Romanian, but more like from Serbia or somewhere like that.

[angharad.livejournal.com]

Personally, I can recognise Portuguese audibly pretty well since I speak Spanish. It's basically funny sounding ("+zh (but not +j or rhythmic and thus not Italian)") Spanish.

[pne.livejournal.com]

I toyed with "Portuguese" briefly because of the "zh" sounds, but not for long. Another thought was "Romanian" because of the "ts" sound, but now I think it's most likely what I think you think it is :)

[angharad.livejournal.com]

Man, tomorrow, I'm gonna be so googling language families and my mistaken notions of what the name of things are. (=

The Answer!

[nik-w.livejournal.com]

http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001583.html

Re: The Answer!

[pne.livejournal.com]

Ah! Thanks muchly!

[tisoi.livejournal.com]

First I guessed Romantsch, then went to Occitan after I heard "les dues regions" ... guess I should've stuck with my first answer.