- What's your favorite dinner?
Where the hell is Ikea from?
They got the meatballs.
Oh, god. I'm walkin' around Ikea right now in my mind!
And you speak Swedish.
(quiet mysterious music)
Hi, I'm Nancy.
I am a community outreach liaison and a nurse.
- I'm Steve.
I was a diplomat for seven years.
I was in the wood business for forty-some-odd years.
- [Interviewer] What are you doing here today, Jesse?
- The name of this meeting was Guess The Language,
so I presume where I'm gonna be guessing languages.
- [Interviewer] How many languages do you speak?
- I tried to learn how to say hello and goodbye
in several languages, so I could greet my patients,
because I kinda wanted them to feel comfortable.
- Took four years of Mandarin Chinese,
but then, that's kinda dissipated from my cortex.
- I speak 20 languages, more or less.
Half of them well.
- [Interviewer] Where does the love of language come from?
- When you learn a language,
the people of that country, culture come alive.
- [Interviewer] You have a blindfold at the ready?
- I got this from the Dollar Tree.
- Oh, this is so trippy.
This is what I sleep in every night,
so this is actually quite comfy,
but it feels very strange
to be alone in my home blindfolded! (laughs)
- [Interviewer] Let's have everybody come in.
(all speaking in foreign languages)
- I'm gonna have some trouble, here!
- Do I still look cute, you guys?
(all speaking in foreign languages)
- [Interviewer] Steve, are you ready for your first person?
- Yep!
- I thought the music sounded very African.
I have heard South African music.
- I'm less confident, now.
Go...go for Botswana.
- I'm hearing a language
that I feel like I would've heard in Wakanda.
Pants, you wear pants.
Okay, you wear pants. (laughs)
I'm gonna go with Sudanese.
- My intuition says something in South America.
The alphabets, please.
Spanish!
- Ah! - Is that Spanish?
♪ Ah-Be-Ce-Che-De-Eh-Efe ♪
(coughing laugh)
Was I right?
- Dude, no!
- You're over by Kenya.
- No! No.
- (screams) No!
Where you from?
- I'm from Zimbabwe.
- Zimbabwe!
- What is your language?
- It's isiNdebele.
(trying to pronounce isiNdebele)
Aye!
- Ndebele.
- Isi-Ndebele.
- Esi-debele.
- isiNdebele.
- Close!
- Inse-dbeli. - Aye!
- Isi.
- Isi, isi.
- Ndebele.
- Debele. Ise-debele.
Sounds like an Italian restaurant or somethin', right?
- No!
- So are those Bantu people?
- Yes. But we don't say Bantu.
We say Bantu.
- Bantu, okay!
- The B is soft.
- Okay, Bantu.
- Yeah.
- Can I know how to say black lives matter?
(Speaking in foreign language)
(trying to speak in foreign language)
(laughs)
(Speaking in foreign language)
Which probably means matter?
- It means important, but yeah.
- I am important.
- You are!
- Okay, first of all, I'm sorry for what I did
and I won't ever do it again.
- Oh, I know what this is!
Okay, do you eat Sisig?
Uh huh. Dinuguan?
Uh huh.
This is the Philippines.
And I know that this is the Philippines
because I'm a wannabe Pilipino.
I eat my Lechon and I say things like pee-pal.
I wanna be so down.
I'm gonna go with that's Thigala.
- Heavy on Arabic vibes.
I would order, maybe, a Kofta Kebob,
and then I hear this coming from the kitchen.
- It's not Turkish, as in Anatolian Turkish,
but there were some sounds that sounded a bit Turkish.
Dilen, Okay.
So it is, yeah.
Dil is language.
I mean, it definitely has a Turkish flavor to it.
Kazakh!
So far, I'm looking pretty good in Central Asia, here.
(laughs)
- The language that I'm speaking is Uyghur.
- Oh, Uyghur!
Uyghur, Uyghur okay!
(trying to speak foreign language)
- You can just say wee-ger if you have to.
- I can say that.
Wee-gur.
- We're a Turkic minority in China.
Every since the 1900s, we've just been known
as the province of Xinjiang.
Which, literally, stands for new land,
so we prefer to have it be known as East Turkestan.
- Are you there right now?
- No, no, no.
I'm in Canada.
- You go back?
- Oh, no. I haven't been back since...
They've started taking away peoples' passports,
so you can't even exit the country.
- Oh, wow!
- Recently, there've been concentration camps,
which has tallied up to
more than 3 million people, we're sure.
- Wow!
- The censorship and propaganda is so intense there,
that I don't think half of the population
even knows what's going on.
- Oh, wow.
- So, how would you say nice to meet you?
- Oh, man!
I don't think we say that very often.
- Okay. (laughs)
How do you say goodbye?
- We say
- That's good, that's easy! I can handle that!
(both chuckle)
- [Interviewer] Will you flirt with Nancy, here?
- [Interviewer] How did that make you feel, Nancy?
- I think good.
- What's your favorite English song?
- Oh, Eminem, yeah! (laughs)
- Can you say hello?
That kind of reminds me of namaste.
Can you say goodbye?
Don't think it's Punjabi
because I know hello and goodbye.
So, that's Hindi.
Oh my god, I'm right!?
Nine, no, that's no, no, no.
- Well, we're certainly
from the Indian subcontinent somewhere.
I take that to be a yes! (chuckles)
So, let's just say that it's Gujarati.
- Okay.
Oh, but I'm kinda right, if I based it off of
(chuckles) looks!
But it is a Indian language?
- Yeah, so that's Marathi.
You actually guessed Gujarati, which is really similar.
Gujarati's here and Marathi's here.
This was really close, I was really surprised!
- So, are they mutually intelligible?
- Actually, yes.
A Marathi speaking person would probably understand
like 50, 70% of Gujarati and vice versa.
These are Sanskrit-origin languages.
- What did you say when you were flirting with me?
- I said that you look so beautiful there's no doubt about!
- But did you mean it? That's what I wanna know.
- I think.
- Did you, okay.
Well, let me take this off!
- Oh my god! - Oh, I just...
(both laugh)
- Tell me a joke in Marathi.
Who's there?
(laughs)
It sounds like the language of the Orthodox Jew.
Do all your friends were the same thing as you?
Ooh, okay.
- Okay, you kinda sing when you talk.
(pretending to speak in foreign language)
What's your favorite dinner?
Where the hell is Ikea from?
It's fut-land, they got the meatballs.
Oh, god. I'm walkin' around Ikea right now in my mind!
Okay um.
You speak Swedish!
- I would say...
Definitely going Norwegian.
- Do you speak Norwegian?
(Speaking in foreign language)
I speak Swedish.
Norwegian and Swedish are very similar,
but there's a certain intonation in Norwegian
that's identifiable.
- - [Interviewer] And what does it sound like?
(pretending to speak in foreign language)
- They have more of a...
That kind of a tone.
Whereas the Swedes...
You know, in Sweden, we speak this way.
- Did I get the language right?
- Nope.
I was speaking Norwegian.
- Isn't that kinda like if I speak English
and then somebody speaks the Queen's English?
Isn't that like?
- No, it's not the same.
- Do you ever get mistaken for an Orthodox Jew?
Does that kinda happen, sometimes?
- That normally doesn't happen when people see me.
Then, it's normally like,
"Oh, are you from, I don't know, Puerto Rico
or Northern Africa?"
- What is your background?
- So, I have a Norwegian father and an African American mom.
- African Amer- - But I was born and raised
here in Norway.
- Oh, how do you say black lives matter?
(speaking in foreign language)
(mumbling in foreign language)
I'm butchering it!
- Can I learn a joke?
Why?
(both laugh)
- What did the cheese say when it looked in the mirror?
Halloumi...like hello me.
I regret saying that joke. - No, I liked it.
It was really good, I liked it.
Hello me.
- This is sounding Russian-ish.
- I can hear the cold in your voice.
It sounds kinda like in a tundra or something like that.
I say Russian.
- How do you say hello in your language?
Nope.
This is like a Russian language, but it's probably not.
It's probably like Maldovian.
(clap, clap)
- I thought I heard the word devet,
which would be nine.
I would say it's a southern Slavic language,
so you could be Macedonian, Serbian, Croatian,
something in that area.
I will guess Serbian.
(Clap)
- It's Dutch!
It's Dutch, she's speaking Dutch!
No.
No, nine.
- Was I right?
- No, but you were close.
You said Macedonian, - Aw! (laughs)
but you didn't stick with it. (laughs)
- I shoulda stuck with it!
- So, it's a Slavic language.
You were close with the Russian thing.
- (screams) See!
- (laughs) But it's completely different language.
- Where is this language spoken?
- In North Macedonia, the country.
It's like eastern Europe, near Serbia,
Bulgaria, Croatia.
- Ah, yeah!
Yeah, I was getting power-lifting vibes from it.
Like you could lift something real heavy.
- [Interviewer] Let's teach Steve a curse word.
What do you got for me?
(speaking in foreign language)
- I won't ask you what it means.
(both laugh)
- [Interviewer] I will, though.
What does it mean?
- It means fuck you.
- Oh!
(both laugh)
- Can I hear a joke?
Like two Olympic weight lifters walk into a bar.
Something along those lines?
(speaking in foreign language)
(laughs)
I can tell that was a good one!
I wanna hear
the English translation. - No!
- I did..
I could tell that was a good one.
- Ciao!
- [Interviewer] Who did he get right?
- Norway, one.
- [Interviewer] Who did he get a little bit right?
- Oh, you're not gonna give me credit
for being close to Zimbabwe?
- Oh, no, no!
Y'all forget us!
Y'all forget us we exist!
(all laugh)
You're not getting credit.
- Very strict!
All right!
(all laugh)
- Who did I get close or at least your region?
- [Interviewer] Who did Jesse guess correctly
- Okay.
(all laugh)
- [Interviewer] Who was he most wrong on?
- Yep, I would have to agree.
And I apologize
for being - That's all right! (chuckle)
- So, so wrong.
- Why is it that more Americans
don't speak as many languages?
- We're asses.
We're asses and we're elitist.
And I think we're lazy!
- Wherever you have people speaking a language
where there are lots of speakers,
so people who speak English,
whether they're American, Canadian, English, Australian,
there's less incentive to learn other languages.
At least, from a practical point of view.
But the same is true in China, Japan, Russia, France.
Wherever people are comfortable.
You can argue they don't need the other languages.
The only reason to learn another language
is because you wanna connect with people
outside of your immediate world.
I think it's a question
of how much you want to interact with people in the world.