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Hello everyone. Welcome to the Langfocus channel and my name is Paul.
Today, rather than get into a new in-depth language documentary, I decided to do a fun little video that we can do together.
I want to give you a challenge. I want to present you with some Mystery Languages.
And you can listen and look at those languages and guess what languages they are.
But don't worry even if you don't guess the language correctly, it will still be interesting
as long as you share the reasons for your guesses in the comments down below
So let's give it a try.
Here's the first language.
Please, listen:
Okay and let me also show you a little bit of that language in its written form.
I don't speak this language but I'll try to read it as best I can.
So what language is it?
The language is Haitian Creole.
If you're a French speaker, then right away you might have known that this was a Haitian Creole.
And other people, you might have noticed some words that sounded French but sounded a little different
That's because the Haitian Creole language is a French-based creole language.
It arose in the 17th and 18th centuries because of interaction between French settlers and african slaves in the area that is now called Haiti.
The majority of its vocabulary derives from French.
But the majority of its syntax derives from the African languages spoken by the slaves.
Let's go back to those two example sentences for a second.
This means "is there a person here who speaks English?"
The beginning of the sentence doesn't really seem French.
"Gen" means "to have" or "there is". It might derive from the French word "gagner"
But the way it's used is quite different from the French word.
And "moun" means "person" and I don't know the origin of this word.
"isit ki palé Anglé" is like "ici qui parle Anglais" in French (= "here who speaks English")
In French, the whole sentence, I guess, would be: "Il y a quelqu'un ici qui parle anglais" (Rem : rather "Y a-t-il ici quelqu'un qui parle anglais?")
The second sentence
This means "I can't speak English".
"Mwen" comes from "moi" in French.
"pa" is the French negation marker "pas"
"kap" comes from the French "capable".
"palé" is "parler"
So the vocabulary is all kind of French but in French it would be like this :
So obviously, the grammar is very different, even though the vocabulary is French-based.
Notice that in the French sentence, "moi" is not used but "je" is used
That's because, in French, "moi" is the object pronoun, while "je" is the subject pronoun.
In Haitian Creole, "mwen" is both.
Now, I'm breaking down these sentences just to show you that Haitian Creole is a combination of French and other influences.
To learn more about Creole languages, check out my video on Pidgins and Creoles right here.
Ok, on to the next language.
Please, listen:
And again, let me show you a little bit of that language in its written form.
So, what language is it?
The language is Frisian, specifically West Frisian.
West Frisian is spoken in a northern province of the Netherlands called Friesland.
Frisian is thought to be the language that is most closely related to English.
Now, it doesn't mean that it's easy for English speakers to understand Frisian.
When I hear it or when I try to read it, I barely understand anything.
But it is closely related to English in its historical development and in the structure of the language.
Alright, let's do one last language.
Please, listen.
And again, let's look at a couple of phrases visually.
Now, I don't speak this language but I'll try to read this as best I can.
So what language is it?
Well, if you know a Romance language, then you probably noticed right away that this is definitely another Romance language
It is actually the Sardinian language, which is spoken on the island of Sardinia in Italy.
It is one of many regional languages in Italy that are often mistakenly referred to as dialects but they're actually separate languages.
Most of them are closely related to Italian but they are different enough to be considered different languages.
Well, I hope you enjoyed guessing today's "Mystery Languages".
Even if you didn't get them right, that's okay.
It should be interesting to share your reasons in the comments down below,
and that should spark some interesting discussion
And if you would like to see more "Mystery language" videos like this sometime in the future, then let me know and I might do it again.
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And special thanks to all my patreon supporters for continuing to make Langfocus possible.
Thank you for watching and have a nice day.