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Hello everyone. Welcome to the Langfocus channel and my name is Paul.
Today's video is the second installment in the series "Mystery Languages".
If you haven't seen the first video in the "Mystery Languages" series,
you can check it out right here.
But basically, this is how it works:
I will play you an audio sample of a language and then I'll show you a visual sample
of the language in it's written form and you can guess what language it is.
But whether you guess correctly or not, that doesn't matter.
The important thing is that you leave your guesses and the reasons for your guesses in the comments down below
And that will spark some interesting discussion.
So, let's get right into the first language.
Please, listen :
Now let's have a look at a few written samples of that same language:
So what language do you think it is?
The language is Cebuano.
A language spoken on the island of Cebu in the Philippines
If you guessed Tagalog or Filipino which is the official language which is based on Tagalog,
then that's a pretty good guess because Tagalog and Cebuano are closely related languages.
I've studied Tagalog and I'm fairly familiar with it.
And when I look at Cebuano, sometimes I don't know if I'm looking at Tagalog with lots of vocabulary I don't know or whether I'm looking at Cebuano.
Cebuano is sometimes referred to as "Bisaya",
which is actually a group of closely related languages that are spoken in the Visayas region in the Philippines.
But some people like to refer to all the Bisaya languages as a single language with different dialects.
That's because all the Bisaya languages are quite closely related
but also because, well, there's power in numbers.
You may have noticed the Spanish vocabulary in the sample sentences.
That's because Cebuano has lots of Spanish loanwords, just like Tagalop does.
In fact, Cebuano has even more Spanish loanwords than Tagalog.
Ok, on to the second language.
Please, listen:
And again, let's have a look at some written samples.
So, what language is it?
It's the Lao language.
Lao is a language spoken in the Southeast Asian nation of Laos.
It's a member of the Tai-Kadai language family,
which is spoken in some parts of Southeast Asia, southern China in northern India.
If you thought the language was Thai, then you were very close
because Thai and Lao are very closely related and to a large degree, they are mutually intelligible.
They are both tonal languages,
but one notable difference is that Thai has five tones while Lao has six stones
They are also written in a slightly different script but the scripts themselves are also closely related.
And if you can read one, then reading the other shouldn't be too hard.
Some of you may have noticed the tones in the language sample, which make the language sound kind of melodic.
And you might have guessed one of the chinese languages like Mandarin or Cantonese.
And those guesses would make sense, because those are tonal languages just like Lao and Thai are.
Ok, on to the third language.
Please, listen:
And again, let's see a bit of the language, visually :
So what language is it?
It's the Romanian language
If you speak any Romance languages, then you probably noticed right away that there was a lot of romance vocabulary in the samples.
But the pronunciation might have seemed kind of unusual to you.
That's because Romanian is a Romance language with some Slavic influence.
That influence affects the pronunciation and also the vocabulary of the language.
You may have also noticed the little glyphs above the letter "a" and below the letter "t".
Those glyphs are actually an integral part of those letters.
And those letters along with this, this and this
give you a quick hint that you're looking at Romanian and not at a different Romance language.
Romanian is spoken in Romania and Moldova
and is geographically isolated from the other major Romance languages.
The Slavic influence on the language makes it distinct from the other Romance languages.
But Romanian is also said to be the closest Romance language to the original Latin.
In grammar, that's probably true.
But in some other areas like phonology, it may not be as close to the original Latin as say Italian.
Well, I hope you enjoyed guessing today's Mystery Languages.
Leave your guesses and your reasons in the comments down below.
And also let me know if you liked this series and you think I should continue doing it.
And again, I want to say thank you to all of my Patreon supporters for your continued support,
especially these ones, right here on the screen, for their especially generous pledges.
Thank you for watching and have a nice day!