Language Googler

You recognised one or two languages, possibly thanks to google or wiki. The good news is, you're in the mid-percentile range! This means that every once in a while a friend may turn to you and ask:

"What's this I'm looking at?"

And you'll say: "Ahh, that's Italian, my dear." And you'd twirl your moustaches (not if you're a girl, duh). You'd of course be lying, you'd have no idea what language it is. But your friends won't know that.

By popular demand, here are the answers:

"En Holanda, la tierra de los molinos, se leyó mucho Don Quijote como una obra satírica sobre la España que se había enfrentado con la potencia protestante, rival en los mares."

Is Spanish (Castellano). This is easy to tell, because occasionally you'll see a tilde over an n: ñ - which tells you this language cannot be Portuguese, French, or Italian. Portuguese, of course, does use a tilde: (or til, as it's called in Portuguese), but only over these two vowels: ã and õ.

The next one was:

"Die Quantenmechanik ist sehr Achtung gebietend. Aber eine innere Stimme sagt mir, dass das noch nicht der wahre Jakob ist. Die Theorie liefert viel, aber dem Geheimnis des Alten bringt sie uns kaum näher. Jedenfalls bin ich überzeugt, dass der Alte nicht würfelt."

This is, of course, German, not Dutch or Danish, and definitely not Italian. The easiest way to tell is the abundance of umlauts (ä, ö, ü) and how all nouns become capitalised: Quantummechanik, Achtung, Stimme... Dutch uses the umlaut in only one word that I can think of: überhaupt, which is a German borrowing. This friendlier cousin to German does occasionally use a diaeresis (looks the same, but has a different function, and so a different name): zoëven. Danish isn't Swedish - where Swedish does use umlauts, Danish uses ø and å as extra vowels where needed.

This paragraph, by the way, is a quote from Albert Einstein, and it's often shortened to "Der liebe Gott würfelt nicht." - "God does not play dice."

The next one:

"Din punct de vedere arhitectonic, Iaşii de azi se prezintă ca un adevărat amestec de nou şi vechi, de istorie şi modernitate, de iarbă, beton şi sticlă. Clădiri cu mare valoare istorică se află printre blocuri noi de locuinţe."

This boring drivel about concrete architecture is in Romanian. You may have been tempted to call it Italian - don't "vedere" and "modernitate" sound Italian? But of course, Italian doesn't use any diacritics either over or under letters. It is, however, definitely a Romance language - in the sense that it is clearly an offshoot of Latin, just like Spanish and Italian are.

The next one was:

"Река Дунав винаги е била важна връзка между Западна Европа и Черно море. По-късно Дунав е била път за достъп до Константинопол. Кръстоносците са използвали реката като транспортна артерия при походите си до Светите места."

I gave you four tough choices, all of which may have seemed very plausible to you. All four options I gave you - Russian, Ukrainian, Macedonian, and Bulgarian - are written in Cyrillic. The only correct answer is that this text is written in Bulgarian. You can tell by the using of ъ (often transcribed ă) as a vowel sound; the same letter does exist in Russian, but its function is completely different (it's not a vowel at all). The Ukrainian alphabet doesn't include the ъ.

I don't know much myself about the next language:

"1122 წელს უცხოელთა ბატონობისაგან ქალაქი გაათავისუფლა დავით IV აღმაშენებელმა. გაერთიანებული საქართველოს სახელმწიფო დედაქალაქი ამიერიდან თბილისში გადმოიტანეს და მან სამეფო ქალაქის სტატუსი მიიღო. XII-XIII საუკუნეებში თბილისი ეკონომიკურად ძლიერი, დიდი და კეთილმოწყობილი ქალაქი იყო, მისი მოსახლეობა 80 ათასს კაცს აღწევდა."

Which is a trick question. That is to say, there are two obviously wrong answers: Azerbaijani and Turkmen. If you know one or two things about the Caucasus, however, you may have been very tempted to answer Zanuri: very close to the correct answer, as it uses the same alphabet. You would've been wrong: this language is Georgian.

The next one:

"A dél-kaukázusi nyelvek (kartvéli) csoportjába tartozik. Közeli rokona a láz nyelv, amelynek beszélői több, mint 500 évvel ezelőtt szakadtak el földrajzilag a mingrél közösségektől. Vannak, akik még mindig a zan nyelv két változatának tartják a mingrélt és a lázt, a kölcsönös megértési nehézségek miatt azonban az uralkodó vélemény szerint külön nyelvekről van szó, amelyek a kartvéli nyelvek zan csoportját alkotják."

Which is an easy one if you're a little familiar with European languages: the ő is the only hint you need. It's Magyar (Hungarian).

The next one:

"国号（正式名称）には通常「日本国」が用いられる。憲法の題名として「大日本帝国憲法」及び「日本国憲法」の表記があるが、条文で「国号を日本国と称する」などと直接かつ明確に規定した法令はない。「日本」の国号が成立する以前は対外的には「倭国」または「倭」と書かれ、国内的には「やまと」と読まれた。"

I tried to jerk you around a little on this one. I gave you four options: Chinese, Japanese (a language written using the Chinese writing system, with simplifications and additions), Korean-Hyangchal (Korean written with Chinese characters), and Vietnamese-chữ nôm (Vietnamese written with, you guessed it, Chinese characters). The answer is obvious, though, if you know anything at all about the languages of Asia: it's clearly Japanese, as only Japanese uses this particular mix of three (count them! Three!) separate writing systems in conjunction with one another.

国 is kanji, borrowed Chinese logograms; び is hiragana, simplified logograms that represent syllables (non-logographically). The third is katakana, a further simplified variant of hiragana, used for words of foreign origin.

The next is a fragment from a poem:

"Denkend aan Holland zie ik brede rivieren traag door oneindig laagland gaan, rijen ondenkbaar ijle populieren als hoge pluimen aan den einder staan; en in die geweldige ruimte verzonken de boerderijen verspreid door het land, boomgroepen, dorpen, geknotte torens, kerken en olmen in een groots verband."

Which is in Dutch, not Danish, Frisian, or German. Dutch tends to double vowels to indicate length and vowel colour, and uses some odd digraphs that appear (at first glance) to have nothing to do with the sounds they represent, like ij (èj) and ui (@y).

The next one I couldn't possibly expect you to recognise:

"Si t'ole pret mwen en grenn. Pou viv jisk a printann. M'apaye twa, li di, avan lotonn, si mo parol, lintere la er principal la. Froumi la lem pa prete: Se so sèl defo. Sa to fè kann li tè fè cho?"

It's a fragment from a poem in Kreyol Lwiziyen, Louisiana Creole. It's a creole language (obviously) based on French, just like the other three options I gave you.

And the last one was:

"Nýbýlajarðirnar voru í mýrlendi í Fossvogsdal. Þær þurfti að ræsta fram og þurrka og var það gert í atvinnubótavinnu árin 1935-36. Sækja þurfti verslun, þjónustu og menntun til Reykjavíkur. Skólabörn tóku Hafnarfjarðarstrætó til Reykjavíkur þar sem flest fóru í Austurbæjarskóla."

Which is Icelandic. It it had been Saami, we would've seen more š in there and fewer þ. If it had been Finnish, we'd see ä and ö, but no ý, ó, and þ. It it'd been Faroese... it would have looked more Faroese, what can I say.

And in case you're wondering: No, I personally don't speak all of these languages. Just some of them. Badly.