Language quiz

Here’s a recording in a mystery language.

Can you guess the language and where it’s spoken?

This entry was posted in Language, Quiz questions.

17 Responses to Language quiz

  1. TJ says:

    Something from the Indian subcontinent.
    The R’s and “SH” sounds though are hmmm confusing…

  2. bennie says:

    I heard ‘Kannada’….so I assume it’s the Dravidian language Kannada, the official language of the state of Karnataka. But I might be wrong because at the very beginning, there was the greetings ‘Namaskar’….So it could be an Indo-European language of South Asia.

  3. Jayarava says:

    I’d say definitely Indian sub-continent, and not Indo-European. I also thought I heard Kannada. The rhythm was not like Hindi/Marathi, nor was the sound pallet. I’d guess South India.

    @Bennie: South Indian languages have lots of Sanskrit loan words, and namaskar is pan-Indian.

  4. Podolsky says:

    A lot of retroflex consonants; it sounds Dravidian. I heard the word Karnataka; most probably it’s Kannada.

  5. Chris Miller says:

    Same guess, same reasons!

  6. d.m.falk says:

    Definitely Kannada, a South Indian language…and the recording comes from Stanford University, I believe, in the San Francisco Bay Area.


  7. Aron says:

    I also guessed Kannada.

  8. TJ says:

    …. and I thought Canadians speak English! :)

    j/k ;)

  9. xarxa says:

    i dont think its dravidian, but i dont know a lot about south-asian languages. ill just go with gujarati

  10. michael farris says:

    I assumed Dravidian right away but it didn’t sound so much like my impressions of Tamil (more rat a tat) or Malayalam (also) or Telegu (more melodic?) so I’ll go with Kannada.

  11. Jayan says:

    I’m definitely going with Kannada. Second guess is Tamil, but I doubt it.

  12. William says:

    I’m going for Tamil.

  13. Andrew says:

    I heard several Spanish words in there (“cuando”, definitely) so I’m not so sure about the Indian guess. Whatever it is, it’s got a good bit of romance language influence in it. Tagalog? Probably not, but that’s the only thing I can think of besides Catalan, and it’s probably not Catalan…

  14. prase says:

    The pronunciation is very Indian. I have also heard Karnataka, so there is a very little possibility that it is anything else than Kannada.

  15. dreaminjosh says:

    The music alone throws this recording right into the subcontinent- and I didn’t hear any spanish or anything remotely romance except the word “university” which of course is Latin run through English. I don’t know much about Indian language, but I know Hindi when I hear it and can tell the difference between that and Tamil- and this didn’t sound like Tamil to me either. I also heard “Karnataka” so, I’m gonna go with Kannada as well.

  16. renato says:

    It looks like Kristang spoken in Goa,South India, it is a mixed of Portuguese and konkani.

  17. Simon says:

    The answer is Kannada (ಕನ್ನಡ), which is spoken in the Indian states of Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra.

    The recording comes from KZSU Stanford 90.1 FM.