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0:00
Welcome to another episode of Mystery Languages, the first one in 7 years. The way it works is that I'll play you an audio sample of a language and then I'll show you some written sentences in that language and you can guess what language it is. Or if you can't guess that, maybe you can guess the language family or what region it's spoken in or anything like that. But if you can't guess, that's fine. I'll reveal the language and tell you a little bit about it.
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Okay, let's hear the first language. Please listen.
0:48
Now let's see some examples in writing.
1:00
Okay. What language do you think it is?
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[Music] The language is Czech. It's the official language of Czecha, also known as the Czech Republic, where it's spoken by around 10.7 million native speakers, and is spoken by around 13 million people in total. Czech is a Slavic language, specifically a West Slavic language. One clue that it's a Slavic language is its abundance of palato alvear hissing sounds shown as palatalized consonants. There are also a lot of consonant clusters. >> A hint that it's Czech and not in other
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Slavic languages, the stress of the words. In Czech, words are stressed on the first syllable. I believe this is also true for Slovac, but not for Russian, Polish, or others. When you see it in writing, some clues it might be Czech are that it's written in a Latin-based alphabet which eliminates several possibilities like Russian, Ukrainian or Bulgarian. And the abundance of haek, the little hook diarritic that's part of many consonant letters. This vowel like an e with a hek
2:08
on top shows that the preceding consonant is palatalized. Slovac and Polish do this by placing I between the consonant and the vowel. Another thing you'll see in Czech is a long ooh sound written with this letter like a U with a ring diiocritic on top. This is a letter you won't see in other Slavic languages. Okay, let's try to guess the next language. Please listen. >> Now then I thought for my little contribution I'll talk about my native city. She in South Yorkshire and I
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reckon most well-known thing about cheveled is other monkeys of course is um its main historical industry steel making and as extension of that gutling um and that's quite a bit different to other cities at westing uh where waving's been merit industry. >> Okay, now let's see some written examples. >> Does she want me to get this through chip oil? She's burning out somewhere but Shan told me here there ain't nobody lives around here so we have no need to worry to send.
3:08
>> So what language do you think it is? [Music] >> The language is English but obviously not standard English. It's the traditional dialect of West Riding Yorkshire specifically the city of Sheffield. The west riding Yorkshire dialect developed from old English just like standard English did but from a different dialect of it, the North Umbrean dialect, just like other northern dialects did as well as Scots. Standard English mainly developed from the East Midlands dialect and this was
3:39
after the dialects had diverged a fair bit during the Middle English period. This dialect has some fascinating differences from standard English. One thing is t forms of the second person pronouns meaning you t to which developed from thou the or the as the object form and thy as the possessive form. Some other pronouns are pronounced differently too like a for I sha for she and so on and different reflexive forms like us for ourselves her sen for herself etc. Also there's the definite
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article t instead of the. I also noticed that the diff thong in words like out, about, south, and round is a monofthong. Abat, sath, rand. Lots of interesting things like that. Okay, on to the next language. Please listen.
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Now let's see some examples in writing.
5:06
Okay. What language do you think it is? The language is Japanese. No, not Japanese. Javanese. Specifically, the dialect of Surabaya, Indonesia's second largest city. Japanese is the most widely spoken mother tongue in Indonesia. Spoken by somewhere around 80 million people. The national language Bahasa Indonesia or Indonesian is spoken by almost the entire population of 270 million people. But most of them don't speak it as their first language because Indonesia has many ethnic groups with
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their own languages. Japanese is one of them spoken primarily on the island of Java. Indonesian and Japanese are both Aranesian languages of the Mallayo Polynesia branch, but they belong to different subbranches of the language family and they're not mutually intelligible. The three sentences we saw in writing are completely different from Indonesian, at least in terms of vocabulary. But in the free talk we heard before that, there were a few words that were similar to Indonesian
6:01
words. The word for language, bahasa in Indonesian and bosau in Japanese. In both languages, it's a lone word from Sanskrit. I noticed some others from Sanskrit as well. The word for million, juta, in both languages. The word for war, parang, in both languages. The word for freedom, midca, in both languages. The word for resident or population, punduk in both. The Japanese word was borrowed from Indonesian. The word for hero, pahlawan, in both languages. And I
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noticed the word gade meaning large, which is common in colloquial Indonesian, but not in standard Indonesian. It was a lone word from Japanese into the Batawi Creole language of Jakarta, which has had a big impact on colloquial Indonesian. We'll continue to the next language in about 10 seconds. I just quickly want to mention Lang Focus channel memberships. If you sign up as a Lang Focus channel member, you'll gain access to exclusive membersonly videos just like Patreon
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supporters do, but you can join right here on YouTube. Look for the subscribe plus button on my channel page or find the membership link in the description. Okay, now on to the next language. Please listen.
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Now, here are some written examples.
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Okay. What language do you think it is? The language is Gilaki. Gilaki is spoken in part of northern Iran on the southern coast of the Caspian Sea. It's a member of the Caspian subbranch of the northwestern Iranian languages closely related to neighboring Mazanderani. Persian or Farsy, the official language of Iran, is a southwestern Iranian language. So, they're related and not really distantly related, but they're different enough that other non-Caspian Persian speakers probably have some
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trouble understanding it. Manuk, the guy who submitted the audio samples, says that people sometimes think Gilaki sounds a little bit like Russian. Maybe that comes from the Gileac people living near the Caspian Sea and coming into contact with the various other people of the area, including Russians. Okay, on to the next language. Please listen. Fore.
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Now some written samples.
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So what language do you think it is? The language is Catalan or in native pronunciation >> Catalan. >> Catalan is a romance language spoken in parts of Spain mainly in Catalonia, the Balieric Islands and Valencia where it's often called Valencian and considered a different language by some. It's also spoken in Andor, the town of Alggerero in Italy, and a small part of France near the border with Spain. It's a member of the Oxyano romance group along with Oxitan, which is spoken in the
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neighboring Oxitania region, which lies mainly in southern France and a small part of Italy. Catalan and Oxitan share some features of Ebero romance languages as well as some features of Gallow romance languages. So, the classification of Oxyano romance languages is debated. Some include Catalan as ibero romance, but Oxyan as Gallow romance, which is strange because they're so closely related to each other. Others include both as gallow romance, even though that sends some
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people's blood pressure through the roof. But basically, they're spoken in a transitional area between gallo romance and ebero romance languages. Okay, on to the next language. Please listen.
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Now have a look at the language and writing.
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Okay. What language do you think it is? The language is Hebrew, specifically modern Hebrew. It's the modern incarnation of Hebrew, an ancient Semitic language spoken in the Holy Land and the language of the Bible. Modern Hebrew was intentionally expanded, updated, and revived as a spoken language as part of the movement for a Jewish homeland. And now it's the official language of Israel. But in the process of reviving it, Hebrew changed somewhat. One hint that you're hearing
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Hebrew is the abundance of the sound. There were originally two letters with different sounds and but in modern Hebrew they became a single phone. So basically you hear it twice as much. Another thing you might notice is a lot of words ending in. This is the masculine plural ending for nouns, adjectives, and verbs in the present tense. Like in this phrase, meaning the children are happy. The feminine plural ending is which you might also hear a lot of. You might also
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hear in the infinitives of some verbs like meaning to see meaning to buy etc. Okay, another language. Please listen.
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And now a few sentences in writing.
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Okay, let's guess the language. The language is Tagen. If you've never heard of that language before, that's fine. I hadn't either until one of you recorded a sample for me. Tagen is spoken in Arunachal Pradesh in northeastern India. It's a Cenino Tibetan language of the Tani branch. The Tani languages in general are spoken by over 2 million people, but Tagen itself is only spoken by around 80,000 people. I've read differing information on whether or not Tagin is a tonal
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language. And it sounds to me like there's a two-tone distinction, low and high. But according to Tungon, the guy who recorded the samples, meaning is not distinguished by tone. There is a distinction between short and long vowels, though. So vowel length can change the meaning of a word. For example, at means old man or grandfather, while at means come here. All right, one final language. Please listen.
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Now let's see it in writing.
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So what language could it be?
13:57
[Music] The language is Kashkai or Kashkai, a Turk language spoken in the far province of southern Iran. It's part of the O's branch of Turk along with Turkish and Azerbaijani. So it has some degree of mutual intelligibility with those languages. Similar to the variety of Azerbaijani used in Iran, Qashqai is written in the Peraso Arabic script. In practice though, it's mainly a spoken language while Persian is normally used in writing. So, how did you do? Were you
14:26
able to guess any of the mystery languages? If you weren't, that's totally fine. The goal is to have fun paying attention for little linguistic clues and then guessing and then learning a little bit from the reveal and the follow-up language introduction. In this video, there were some languages I knew a lot about, but there were some others I knew nothing about or just a little bit about. So, this is a learning experience for everyone. If you'd like to send me a sample of you speaking a
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little bit of your language, you can do that, and maybe I'll use it in a future Mystery Languages video. I'll leave a link to the submission form in the description of this video. The question of the day, were you able to guess any of the languages, or were you close? What kind of clues did you notice in audio and in writing that helped you guess? Leave your answers in the comments. I'd like to give a big shout out to all of the Lang Focus Patreon supporters and YouTube channel members,
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especially the super supporters whose names appear on the screen. Patrons and channel members help keep this channel going every month. You can become a member too and gain access to exclusive membersonly videos. If you enjoyed this new Mystery Languages video, then here's a playlist with all the videos from the original series going back seven or eight years. Click on the thumbnail to check it out.
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