Posted on 02/14/2014 5:41:49 PM PST by kingattax
Amongst the thousands of languages spoken across the world, here are just eighty. How many can you distinguish between?
(Excerpt) Read more at greatlanguagegame.com ...
Eventually if you play long enough you will hit 850.
Hit 500 fairly easily. Languages studied/learned/spoken in my home: English, French, Spanish, German, Japanese, Arabic. That helps. Haven’t traveled nearly as widely as I’d like, but grew up in multi-cultural metropolitan city.
Took the test five times, scored from 300 to a max at 600 once ... Probably would’ve helped if the audio quality on some of the clips was better. I was trying to listen for the word endings which usually helps identify the language family group, but this proved misleading some times.
I listen for the words of goodbye. I know the other language for the words.
I think it was a lucky set of sound bytes and answers. On the second try I got 150.
No worries. My hearing is so damaged, I can barely understand English, just ask my wife...........
My score was 750 — with many lucky guesses. Usually I could eliminate at least some of the choices, though. I missed Latvian, South Efate (I have no idea what that is, or whether there’s a North Efate :-), and Farsi.
LOL.
My best score was 550.
Twice now, I was wrong on Greek. Strange since my ex-wife is Greek and I spent countless hours/days/years listening to her family speak Greek.
I think there may be some dialects within certain languages that make this more difficult.
Got a 700. Got Slovak wrong twice. Hate those guys.
I like to think that I am very good at identifying languages. I missed one this weekend. I asked the associate at Walmart if her accent was Australian but she was a Kiwi.
650 for my second try. This time I ran into some languages that I recognized without guessing (I’ve studied many Western-European languages), but my guesses on the ones I didn’t know weren’t quite as good as the first time. I missed Fijian, Indonesian, and Urdu. I think I’ll quit now and not push my luck any further.
Oh my!! 850! I am impressed! I’ll have to play again. I find it hard, because I don’t know all the languages at all. I do know French, a little Spanish and Italian, German, Hebrew, Yiddish. And I have experience hearing Russian and Armenian around me. That’s about it. I also seem to recognize some Vietnamese and Korean and Japanese sounds.
They cheat too -— on one, I heard an obviously african accident, and some African language was listed among the choices. But then I understood every word he was saying — the language was French, though his accent was. NOT. TRICKY.
Portugese sounds odd to me sometimes. Every once in a while, I hear a snatch of it, and for a split second, it sounds Russian to me.
Don’t know why.
My former boss was fluent and worked in Japan for many years, but he definitely looked like a gaijin. Big guy, balding, wire-rimmed glasses, blue eyes.
He was at a baseball game, and there were a couple of guys behind him talking about him in Japanese. He said they were discussing loudly how disgusting he looked, and how revolting he smelled.
He said he turned around to them and said in the most polite, sincere, and subservient tone, that he was sincerely sorry for ruining their atmosphere at the game, and would be happy to move to another seat.
He said they were flabbergasted and couldn’t utter a word, then they looked completely shamed.
Der gunderhaven drizzleflippen!
(That is what German sounds like to me!)
I knew a German guy who told me that Americans sound like dogs to Germans, then opened his mouth and with a staccato tone did his imitation of what Americans sound like to him: “ARF ARF ARF ARF!”
Hahahah. I about fell out. It reminded me that nearly everyone makes fun of the sound of people whose language they don’t understand!
I did it, I did it, I got 850!
Mostly because I got a good guess, picking Ukraine instead of Russia.
I had a sales guy who dealt with my institution who was Australian, and every time he would come in and give me a hearty “How ya doin’, Mate?”
He had quite the accent, very broad.
I was at a trade show and saw him, went over to say hi, and heard him talking to a guy.
Hahahahaha...nearly the King’s American English! Very little accent!
That was okay. I never let on that I knew he turned it on and off, and he was a good sales guy.
The Japanese are notoriously and easily the most xenophobic country among the top economic producers.
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