Name the language

Here’s a recording of part of a news report in a mystery language. Any ideas which language it is and where it’s spoken?

This entry was posted in Language, Quiz questions.

0 Responses to Name the language

  1. Halabund says:

    Googling points to Kinyarwanda or something related, but I may be wrong.

  2. LandTortoise says:

    A Portuguese based creole?

  3. S Shelby says:

    Definitely Bantu, most likely Niger-Congo – my uneducated guess is Lozi because many of the words matched an online Lozi dictionary, although I think the Kamba were mentioned in the recording, so it could be Kikamba.

  4. Podolsky says:

    Quechua – Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador.

  5. d.m.falk says:

    Sounds to me a native South American language. Beyond that, I can’t really tell.


  6. d.m.falk says:

    Podolsky: That was a first thought, though I wasn’t sure.


  7. vautour says:

    Another vote for Quechua.

  8. Daydreamer says:

    Definitely not Quechua. If S. Shelby isn’t right, I’d go to the opposite direction – to South East Asia and an Austronesian language.
    The doubling of “semana” (= “for weeks”) could point to a Spanish influence. So what about a language of the Philippines -Tagalog, Cebuano or Bisaya?

  9. SeNdY says:

    It sounds to me like a South American dialect/language.
    and st. Google says that “semana tanda” is something like “Semana Santa” in spanish, so I would go for something from South America.

  10. DL says:

    one more vote for quechua

  11. Evans says:

    i’d also say quechua. the cadence seems right, and even though there are clicks, i don’t think it is a bantu language.

  12. BG says:

    If there are true clicks it isn’t Quechu, although there is a uvular ejective [q’] (along with other ejectives) which may sound like a click.

  13. d.m.falk says:

    Daydreamer: The languages of the Philipines are all malay languages. I had a teacher and friend who himself was a Tagalog– Believe me, the cadence and structure of the language in this recording is nothing like Tagalog, but does resemble many native languages in the Americas. I stick by this being a South American language, perhaps one of the Andean languages like Quechua or Aymara.


  14. Simon says:

    The answer is Quechua (Runasimi), which is spoken mainly in Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador.

    The recording comes from here.

  15. Daydreamer says:

    Oops! So sorry for misleading you all, but the recording sounds so different from what I have in mind of a piece of radio broadcast in Quechua.

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