Please identify the language

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Re: Please identify the language

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-04-12, 12:26

Moraczewski wrote:I don't speak any of them and still can't tell one from another!

In your last recording, the Persian recording included the words "Iran" and "Tehran" and the Hausa recording included the word "Hausa." :P

In this one, I think the first language might actually be Congolese Swahili because what little I can clearly make out sounds like Swahili for the most part but with some French words mixed in. Or it might be a closely related language, like Kinyarwanda or Kirundi. I think the second at 2:29 is Mandarin Chinese, but the third language, which seems to be Modern Standard Arabic, comes soon after that around 3:10. The last one around 5:00 appears to be Pashto.

I remember one time md0 caught a radio station in my own heritage language, Malayalam. :D

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Re: Please identify the language

Postby Moraczewski » 2017-05-17, 9:58

Hi! It's me again with radio recordings.

http://vocaroo.com/i/s1R8YjMxNFYa

It starts with Russian with heavy accent but at 0:40 switches to an unknown language.

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Re: Please identify the language

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-05-17, 12:17

I'm guessing Bengali, and then I think Hindi from 0:50 or something to about 1:18, then Bengali again?

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Re: Help discovering the language (and the lyrics) of this audio clip ("filament" by Yousei Teikoku)

Postby NTxC » 2017-05-19, 3:49

NTxC wrote:Greetings,

I'm determined to discover the language (and lyrics) of a specific fragment in a song, "filament" by Yousei Teikoku.

I've created an acapella version of the fragment to understand it easier. Here's the link to the audio clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DiEKveNBMzY

The song is in Japanese, but this segment is pretty strange as it doesn't sound very Japanese to me.

Here's the full song (the fragment is between 0:17 - 0:28):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfxYLORjWCg

Any help would be appreciated!
Patrick


Greetings!

After a few months, I managed to get this question through to the writer of the song, Yui Itsuki herself. Here's the amusing answer I got:

Code: Select all

Me: “In ‘Filament’, at the beginning of the song (0:16-0:27) there are 4 mysterious lines that you sing but are not documented anywhere, not even in the official lyrics booklet! What do you sing there?”

Yui: "To be honest, I can’t remember very well, but they are words for fairies and not for humans, therefore don’t worry if you can’t understand."


Link to the interview: http://manga.tokyo/interview/an-intervi ... teikoku/2/

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Re: Please identify the language

Postby Moraczewski » 2017-05-24, 9:01

Hi! My shortwave listening goes on, and here is another unknown language
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1OUgAe4obIN
It seems to have long vowels and consonants like Finnish, but it's definitely not Finnish.

IpseDixit

Re: Please identify the language

Postby IpseDixit » 2017-05-24, 10:06

Moraczewski wrote:Hi! My shortwave listening goes on, and here is another unknown language
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1OUgAe4obIN
It seems to have long vowels and consonants like Finnish, but it's definitely not Finnish.


To me it sounds like Malay, though the man seems to be speaking Mandarin or some other Chinese language.

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Re: Please identify the language

Postby Vlürch » 2017-05-24, 17:51

Moraczewski wrote:Hi! My shortwave listening goes on, and here is another unknown language
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1OUgAe4obIN
It seems to have long vowels and consonants like Finnish, but it's definitely not Finnish.

Whatever it is, it has some Arabic words like "haram" (forbidden), "muhabbat" (love) and "hayat" (life), and they're talking about Beijing and something about Arabia/Arabs/Arabic?
IpseDixit wrote:To me it sounds like Malay, though the man seems to be speaking Mandarin or some other Chinese language.

You're probably right. For some reason, I always forget that Malay even exists... I thought it'd be some Indian language, especially since I also heard "nirvana" and assume she didn't mean the band. :lol:

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Re: Please identify the language

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-05-25, 2:45

No, your original guess was right. It's not Malay; it's Tamil! It doesn't have any Arabic loanwords (definitely not those three and I couldn't identify any others), but IpseDixit is right about the other guy speaking Mandarin, and you (Vlürch) correctly identified the word "Beijing" because it's a news report and the guy is from (I guess) pre-recorded footage, probably of Xi Jinping or some high-profile Chinese diplomatic figurehead like that. That being said, the lady's Tamil sounds really weird. It is the slowest Tamil I have ever heard in my life, and it sounded like she kept pronouncing the locative suffix separately, as if it was a separate word. :shock: :? Maybe she isn't a native speaker, idk.

Also, if something sounds like Finnish due to long vowels but not much else, I think our Dravidian languages are a pretty good bet. ;)

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Re: Please identify the language

Postby Moraczewski » 2017-05-25, 5:45

vijayjohn wrote:It's not Malay; it's Tamil! It doesn't have any Arabic loanwords (definitely not those three and I couldn't identify any others), but IpseDixit is right about the other guy speaking Mandarin, and you (Vlürch) correctly identified the word "Beijing" because it's a news report and the guy is from (I guess) pre-recorded footage, probably of Xi Jinping or some high-profile Chinese diplomatic figurehead like that. That being said, the lady's Tamil sounds really weird. It is the slowest Tamil I have ever heard in my life, and it sounded like she kept pronouncing the locative suffix separately, as if it was a separate word. :shock: :? Maybe she isn't a native speaker, idk.

Wow, that's informative. I believe this was one of Radio China International broadcasts, so it's no surprise they don't have enough native Tamil staff. Their Russian isn't always the best either.

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Re: Please identify the language

Postby Vlürch » 2017-05-28, 9:26

vijayjohn wrote:It doesn't have any Arabic loanwords (definitely not those three and I couldn't identify any others)

Really? Well, I mean, I shouldn't be surprised, but hearing words that sound like some other words and them not being those words is always surprising unless they're obviously not those words. In this case, I didn't think they would be false friends or conjugated frogs of other words or anything else than Arabic loanwords, because... I don't even know why tbh. :lol:

Anyway, I heard "Arabia" at 2:10 and 3:41, "hayat" at 1:46 and 2:15, "muhabbat" at 2:28 and 3:53 (maybe 4:09 too, although without the final T, just after what sounds like "russii"... something about loving Russia? ._.), "haram" at 3:04 and 3:25 following "iman" at 3:24. I also thought I heard "khalil" like maybe half a dozen times. Also, "nirvana" at 1:33... and "sutra" multiple times, along with some other Sanskrit words, but that didn't confuse me since I assumed it was some Indian language already, and IIRC Malay has tons of loanwords from Indian languages so I assumed IpseDixit was more correct because before reading his post, I didn't even remember that Malay exists.

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Re: Please identify the language

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-05-28, 12:36

Vlürch wrote:Anyway, I heard "Arabia" at 2:10

That's odd; I heard "Beijing" at exactly the same spot.
and 3:41

That's a verb (modifying a noun).
"hayat" at 1:46 and 2:15

That's because if a noun in Tamil or Malayalam ends in /am/ in nominative case, it ends in /at̪t̪in/ in genitive/possessive case, and the noun at these two times (don't remember whether it's the same noun or not) happened to have the sound /aj/ before that ending.
"muhabbat" at 2:28 and 3:53 (maybe 4:09 too, although without the final T, just after what sounds like "russii"... something about loving Russia? ._.)

All three of those are the ending of one word combined with the beginning of another. The one around 2:28 sounds like it has something to do with a Sanskrit loanword that literally means 'face' [muha] followed immediately by something about looking ([paːr] means 'look!' but stops are voiced between vowels). [muha] and similar words are used in a lot of compounds in Tamil and Malayalam, e.g. in Malayalam, [t̪ɔˈrəmukʰəm] 'port' < /t̪urajkku/ 'open!" + /mukʰam/ 'face'. (I'm not terribly confident about the location of stress in any words in Malayalam or Tamil btw because I think prosody interferes a lot with it).

At 3:53 and 4:09, she's saying [səˈmuːhə] 'society' (Sanskrit loanword) followed I think by some form of [ˈʋaːɻʋɯ] which I think might mean 'praise'. At 4:09, she said [oˈɾu], which is the indefinite article ('a'), followed by some noun phrase beginning with [ˈsiːnə səˈmuːhə] 'Chinese society'.
"haram" at 3:04 and 3:25 following "iman" at 3:24.

[n̪əˈhəɾəm] is a Sanskrit loanword meaning 'city' (compare e.g. Gandhinagar). Around both 3:04 and 3:25, she's saying [ˈmaːn̪əhəɾəm], which means 'great city' or perhaps 'metropolis', from [məˈhaː] (as in maharaja) > [maː] + [n̪əˈhəɾəm]. Around 3:24-3:25, she says something like [iː ˈmaːn̪əhəɾəm] 'this metropolis'.
I also thought I heard "khalil" like maybe half a dozen times.

Well, that's not surprising. /kaɭil/ is just the combination of the plural suffix (/kaɭ/) and the locative suffix (/il/). :P
Also, "nirvana" at 1:33

I heard a compound noun at that point, something perhaps having to do with [n̪iːr] 'water, juice, liquid'.

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Re: Please identify the language

Postby melski » 2017-05-29, 18:33

vijayjohn wrote:
Vlürch wrote:Anyway, I heard "Arabia" at 2:10

That's odd; I heard "Beijing" at exactly the same spot.
[/quote]
She says both, first Beijing at 2:10 and Arabia at 2:12
................Native: French (fr) French
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.........Conversational: Catalan (ca) Catalan, Spanish (es) Spanish
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Re: Please identify the language

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-05-29, 23:26

melski wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:
Vlürch wrote:Anyway, I heard "Arabia" at 2:10

That's odd; I heard "Beijing" at exactly the same spot.

She says both, first Beijing at 2:10 and Arabia at 2:12

Ah, OK, you're right. Thanks! :)

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Re: Please identify the language

Postby Moraczewski » 2017-06-06, 6:09

Thanks for details of Tamil recording, the language sounds really exciting.
Anyway I have more of those recordings that I would like to identify if possible
http://vocaroo.com/i/s1BsIjSL27TZ
at 5:50 the announcer seems to say "BBC" so I suppose this is one of BBC African broadcasts.
at 6:20 probably another language is heard

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Re: Please identify the language

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-06-07, 3:58

I think that first language might be Hausa again, but the song kind of reminds me of Khmer, oddly. I think the language from 6:20 is Persian, but there's so much background noise that it's hard to tell.

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Re: Please identify the language

Postby Moraczewski » 2017-06-07, 5:21

vijayjohn wrote: but the song kind of reminds me of Khmer, oddly.

This is really odd because the song is actually Spanish and someone already identified it as La Chica - Oasis (the singer is French/Venezuelian from Paris). Hausa is reasonable suggestion because BBC has Hausa service for West Africa.

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Re: Please identify the language

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-06-07, 5:23

Moraczewski wrote:
vijayjohn wrote: but the song kind of reminds me of Khmer, oddly.

This is really odd because the song is actually Spanish and someone already identified it as La Chica - Oasis (the singer is French/Venezuelian from Paris).

Oh, that actually kind of makes sense, believe it or not. :lol: I'm probably just sleepy.

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Re: Please identify the language

Postby eskandar » 2017-06-07, 21:43

vijayjohn wrote:I think the language from 6:20 is Persian, but there's so much background noise that it's hard to tell.

Good call. It is definitely Persian, but I had to strain to hear it through the background noise.
Please correct my mistakes in any language.

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Re: Please identify the language

Postby הענט » 2017-06-09, 9:34

Image

Hi. We have a ne Thai massage studio here in Ústí. Can somebody transcribe the pronunciation and meaning of the Thai script. I think the last three letters or so mean Thai.

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Re: Please identify the language

Postby Moraczewski » 2017-06-13, 7:59

Thank you for the previous answers. Here is one more recording. Some African language?
http://vocaroo.com/i/s0HTcYiJ7hYU


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