Speaking in Tongues
August 24, 2020 1:35 PM Subscribe
Christine speaking Shetlandic; Vernell speaking Texas German; Aurora and Ademar speaking Mirandese; Sonia speaking Booráá; 王奕 speaking Wu; Arimardan speaking Bhojpuri; Peji speaking Sukuma; Hangi speaking Kihunde; Bonaventure speaking Murrinhpatha; James speaking Zambian Sign Language; Suzana speaking Croatian Sign Language (HZJ). The preceding links are to a small sampling of the many YouTube videos posted by Wikitongues. How Are You Feeling?
And the accent for Texas German is even more Texan than I expected.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 2:15 PM on August 24, 2020 [6 favorites]
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 2:15 PM on August 24, 2020 [6 favorites]
I don't speak German, though I took a summer intensive designed to substitute for a year of college German, and non-Gothic written German literature is fairly intelligible to me at a rudimentary level with a lot of time and effort, but as I listened to that Texas German I had a very prolonged sensation that I was just about to understand it though the understanding never arrived — it was almost like being on the verge of sneezing for five solid minutes and then finally giving up.
posted by jamjam at 2:41 PM on August 24, 2020 [4 favorites]
posted by jamjam at 2:41 PM on August 24, 2020 [4 favorites]
Wow, Bhojpuri is so similar to Hindi, I could almost follow it.
posted by dhruva at 3:07 PM on August 24, 2020
posted by dhruva at 3:07 PM on August 24, 2020
mirandês is perfectly understandable to a Portuguese speaker. and Aurora and Ademar are just so sweet!
posted by chavenet at 3:21 PM on August 24, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by chavenet at 3:21 PM on August 24, 2020 [2 favorites]
Yeah that Texas German clip is wonderful. Very well recorded too; a lot of language samples aren't nearly as well produced. There's a crew that's been working on a movie about Texas German for awhile, All Güt Things, according to their Facebook group they've won awards screening it at some small film festivals. I haven't seen a way to watch it myself yet though.
Texas German previously on Metafilter, including this BBC article and the Texas German Dialect Project, out of UT Austin.
posted by Nelson at 4:39 PM on August 24, 2020 [2 favorites]
Texas German previously on Metafilter, including this BBC article and the Texas German Dialect Project, out of UT Austin.
posted by Nelson at 4:39 PM on August 24, 2020 [2 favorites]
What I really want is a roundup of people speaking variations on English. Gullah-Geechee, for example. There's this sample from WikiTongues but it's got a low density of Gullah-to-standard-English. This short story works better as a quick demonstration of the language for me. Also this Seminole Creole is closely related and wonderful.
But there's a lot of other variants of English. There's a few solid Jamaican Patois samples online. Here's WikiTongue's but she spends more time talking about Patois than speaking in Patois. Maybe this recording is better.
Looking for these I realized searching Wikitongues for English finds a whole lot of examples; Liberian, Cajun, Bermudian, Scots, Guyanese Creole, .. there's a lot of English variants all over a scale of "much like American English but with some slang" to "wow that's really the same language I speak?!" Fun listening.
posted by Nelson at 4:48 PM on August 24, 2020 [1 favorite]
But there's a lot of other variants of English. There's a few solid Jamaican Patois samples online. Here's WikiTongue's but she spends more time talking about Patois than speaking in Patois. Maybe this recording is better.
Looking for these I realized searching Wikitongues for English finds a whole lot of examples; Liberian, Cajun, Bermudian, Scots, Guyanese Creole, .. there's a lot of English variants all over a scale of "much like American English but with some slang" to "wow that's really the same language I speak?!" Fun listening.
posted by Nelson at 4:48 PM on August 24, 2020 [1 favorite]
Scots is a separate language with many dialects, and Wikitongues seems not to respect that.
posted by scruss at 7:11 PM on August 24, 2020
posted by scruss at 7:11 PM on August 24, 2020
scruss, what are you seeing that makes you say that? It appears on the project's website that they consider Shetlandic a dialect of the Scots language, and there is at least one more Scots language sample.
posted by ecreeves at 8:51 PM on August 24, 2020
posted by ecreeves at 8:51 PM on August 24, 2020
Ha, to me Texas German just sounds like German with a strong American accent. I had no trouble with that. The other non-English language I'm strong on is Portuguese and the Mirandese was where I felt like I was soooooo close to locking on but couldn't get there. But I did pick up agora, olha! é verdade and other interjections.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 10:07 PM on August 24, 2020
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 10:07 PM on August 24, 2020
And underneath that strong American accent is a pretty strong Taunus accent. How interesting.
posted by dominik at 11:00 PM on August 24, 2020
posted by dominik at 11:00 PM on August 24, 2020
Together with the Muinane language, Booráá forms a small linguistic family, the so-called ‘Boran languages’, which are linguistically unique among their regional neighbors in that they are tonal; that is, changes in pitch alter the lexical or grammatical meaning of words.
Wow this is so interesting, thank you for the post!
posted by FirstMateKate at 8:22 AM on August 26, 2020
Wow this is so interesting, thank you for the post!
posted by FirstMateKate at 8:22 AM on August 26, 2020
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posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 2:01 PM on August 24, 2020 [1 favorite]