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Hello everyone. Welcome to the LangFocus Channel
and my name is Paul
Today's video is Mystery Languages 4
Can you guess the mystery languages?
For each language I'll give you an audio sample to listen to,
and after that I'll give you a written sample of the language, so you can see what it looks like.
And then I'll give a moment to make a note of your answer, to make a note of you've guess,
before I reveal the answer to you.
So let's begin with the first language.
That one was actually a giraffe.
Giraffes normally communicate through infrasonic sounds that humans can't hear.
So you problably won't hear a giraffe making sounds like that anytime soon.
So I guess we'll just move on to a human language.
Please listen.
Now some written examples
So what language is it?
.
..
...
The language is Tok Pisin
Tok Pisin is English-based creole that is spoken in Papua New Guinea.
You may have noticed some English words,
or some words that sounded strangely similar to English
but pronounced differently.
That's because most of Tok Pisin's vocabulary came from English
while the basis if its grammar came from local languages.
Let's take a look at some of those sentences again.
"Buk bilong husat" means "Whose book?" or "Whose book is this?"
"Buk" means "book".
"Bilong" comes from "belong" but is used to show possession in Tok Pisin.
"Husat" means "who",
and I think it comes from "who's that".
So word for word it's...
Book-belong-who?
"Em i gat planti moni" means "He has much money".
"Em" means he, it comes from "him", actually.
"I" is a word that comes before of predicate.
"Gat" means "has", and it comes from English "got".
"Planti" means "much" or "plenty".
And "moni" means "money", of course.
"Mi no kam bikos mi sik" means: "I didn't come because I'm sick".
The verb tense is not really specified but it would be clear from the context.
"Mi" means "I"
and It's comes English "me",
because in Tok Pisin there's no distinction between the subject and the object pronoun.
"No" shows a negative;
"kam" means "come";
"bikos" means "because";
then there's "mi" again;
and "sik" means "sick".
So you can see that speaking Tok Pisin is it's sort of like speaking English
with a kind of simplified grammar and some different pronunciation .
But of course there is more to it than that.
Ok, on to the next language
Now let's see some written samples.
So what language do you think it is?
The language is Zulu.
Zulu is a member of the Bantu language family
and is spoken by around 10 million people
mainly in South Africa, but also in nearby Botswana, Lesotho,
Malawi, Mozambique and Swaziland.
One feature you may have noticed while listening was some “click” sounds.
Listen to this phrase again:
Notice that the letter “c” stands for a click sound here.
And here's a short clip from that audio sample again.
This time, listen for the clicks.
Clicks are a linguistic feature found almost exclusively in African languages,
specifically in the Bantu and Cushitic language families.
Ok, on to the next language.
And now let's *see* the language.
So, what's the mystery language?
It's Polish.
Polish is a member of the Slavic language family
so if you guessed a different Slavic language like Russian, then you were pretty close.
Polish has around 55 million native speakers, mainly in Poland,
but it's also spoken by Polish minorities in other countries.
Here are some hints that this language is Polish.
There are numerous diacritic marks, including the “kreska”
(which looks like an acute accent),
and the ogonek, like a little tail attached to these vowels.
there are also digraphs and trigraphs that represent single consonant sounds,
like these ones. So you'll see these combinations of letters quite frequently in Polish.
You'll also see the letter “y” used as a vowel,
so it often appears between consonants or after a consonant at the end of a word.
If you'd like to learn more about the Slavic language family,
check out my video on the subject right here.
I hope you had fun guessing today's mystery languages.
Be sure to go down to the comment section and tell us what you guessed, and why you guessed that way.
As always, that will probably start some interesting discussions.
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Thank you for watching and have a nice
DAY.