Arakanese (ရခိုင်ဘာသာ), also known as Rakhine, a Burmese language

October 6, 2021 11:07 AM

Omniglot, a continuously updated online encyclopedia of languages that's even older than Metafilter (and a fave on the blue). Yet to be featured here is the weekly language quiz. Do you know or can you guess the language, and do you know where it’s spoken?

Do you want to know how to say "Excuse me miss, there's a duck on your head" in Indonesian?* Check out the assorted 'useful' foreign phrases. The "useful phrases" have previously been posted on the Blue multiple times, including most recently "a hovercraft full of eels" in 2016 and back in 2009!).

* Maaf, Nona. Ada bebek di atas kepala anda.

posted by spamandkimchi (16 comments total)

As far as I can tell, the audio sample language quizzes first became a (semi-regular) feature back in 2006.
posted by spamandkimchi at 11:14 AM on October 6, 2021

This is fantastic. I've always had a pretty good ear for mostly European languages but managed to quickly come up with the same answer as others were guessing on the site. But apparently we were all wrong and off by about 1,000 miles. Still, great fun and educational at the same time.
posted by etaoin at 11:26 AM on October 6, 2021

wow that weekly quiz is wild!! I was very proud to figure out/guess the region or language group in a few cases.
posted by supermedusa at 12:35 PM on October 6, 2021

Είναι όλα ελληνικά για μένα
posted by y2karl at 12:51 PM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

y2karl does that say "this is Greek to me"??? (can't believe I figured that out from one semester of Greek in 1986 LOL)
posted by supermedusa at 2:27 PM on October 6, 2021

I am liking the Scottish Gaelic foreplay...
Scottish Gaelic

Cò an caora sin còmhla riut a chunnaic mi an-raoir?
Who was that sheep I saw you with last night?

Cha b'e sin caora, 'se sin mo chèile a bha innte!
That was no sheep, that was my spouse!

Dè th'ort fo d'fhèileadh?
What do you wear under your kilt?

An toir thu dhomh pòg?
Will you give me a kiss?
posted by Oyéah at 2:34 PM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

What do you wear under your kilt?

Nothing...I use antichafing powder!
posted by praemunire at 3:14 PM on October 6, 2021

Wow, I love those Burmese Arakanese letterforms. Thanks, spamandkimchi.
posted by straight at 3:40 PM on October 6, 2021

y2karl does that say "this is Greek to me"???

It's what Google Translate gave for "It's all Greek to me."

Man, you certainly learned your lessons well -- you will always be superdupermedusa to me from now on.
posted by y2karl at 3:59 PM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

By the way, I'm horrendous at this quiz. I sincerely thought that since I had traveled widely (sorta) in Asia and watched a lot of documentaries about all sorts of things that I would at least be able to guess a few related languages, but clearly a) my memory for sounds is awful and b) I'm not watching enough documentaries about indigenous peoples. I'm guessing "somewhere in Asia" for a bunch of these except the Ryukyu one which had recognizable Japanese vocab.

Also I am now looking at the (incomplete) map of world languages and language families as cheat sheets.
posted by spamandkimchi at 4:28 PM on October 6, 2021 [1 favorite]

Huh, I have an excuse to post this:

I saw this sign and was extremely offended. Then I saw the English. pic.twitter.com/tEOOTVDz5U— Elli Fischer (@Adderabbi) October 6, 2021

[Click for spoiler]

The English sign says “Piece of Cake”; the Hebrew one is a poor transliteration of that, which is more easily read as “piss off kyke”. That last word is an anti-Jewish slur and is usually spelled differently.

posted by Joe in Australia at 4:32 PM on October 6, 2021 [2 favorites]

Oh yeah, and it doesn't help my guessing game that my other, non-English, native-ish tongue is (probably) a language isolate.

I see some people on the internet have been misled by the huge number of Chinese origin words in Korean. Similarities to Japanese vocabulary are because the words have the same Chinese characters as the basis - like library is túshū guǎn in Mandarin Chinese, do-seo-gwan in Korean; and toshokan in Japanese). Despite that Korean is most definitely NOT in the Sino-Tibetan family of languages.
posted by spamandkimchi at 4:52 PM on October 6, 2021

Interestingly, Omniglot also has a compilation of idiomatic expressions equivalent to "it's Greek to me" in a variety of languages. The Greek equivalent is apparently "Εἶναι γιὰ μένα κινέζικα", "It's Chinese to me." It's kind of interesting to see what languages various speech communities identify as the exemplar of incomprehensibility.
posted by biogeo at 7:30 PM on October 6, 2021 [3 favorites]

This is neat. And fiendishly hard. Makes me realize how much I depend on orthographic context clues for making educated guesses about languages I don't recognize.

The most recent clip nicely illustrates (maybe? I assume?) a sprachbund effect; I guessed that I was listening to a lesser-spoken variety of Chinese, as the overall cadence really reminded me of Mandarin and I kept hearing something like "wo" at the beginning of sentences. But then after clicking through I saw the clue that the language is spoken in China but is not Sino-Tibetan!
posted by dusty potato at 8:33 PM on October 6, 2021

What do you wear under your kilt?

Nothing...I use antichafing powder!

Traditionally nothing is worn beneath a kilt. But if you’re lucky, something is a little bit worn.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 9:07 PM on October 6, 2021

"It's Greek to me."

The wikipedia list is also interesting. The ones that are less distant or can be chained are particularly intriguing. I haven't found any that are quite reciprocal. The Turkish, "I am French to the topic," seems unique. (I'm tempted to try that one out in English.)

I'd enjoy finding more well-documented discussion of the game telephone.
posted by eotvos at 9:28 AM on October 8, 2021 [1 favorite]