I'll probably FAIL at this language game (I hope not)

It seems that the Great Language Game has been discontinued. That's unfortunate. But it was fun while it lasted.
Are you learning a language? One great resource to check out is Innovative Language podcast programs: langfocus.com/innovative-lang....
Langfocus Paul vs The Great Language Game! In this game I listen to audio samples of languages and try to guess what they are. Mystery Languages in reverse!
Support Langfocus on Patreon / langfocus
My current Patrons include these fantastic people: Brandon Gonzalez, Rafael Seher, Trevor Lawrence, Patrick Batchelder, Pomax, Виктор Павлов, Mark Thesing, Auguste Fields, Jiajun "Jeremy" Liu, иктор Павлов, Guillermo Jimenez, Sidney Frattini Junior, Bennett Seacrist, Ruben Sanchez, Michael Cuomo, Eric Garland, Brian Michalowski, Sebastian Langshaw, Scott Russell, Florian Breitwieser, Lorraine Inez Lil, FRANCISCO, Mohammed A. Abahussain, Fred, UlasYesil, JL Bumgarner, Rob Hoskins, Thomas A. McCloud, Ian Smith, Maurice Chow, Matthew Cockburn, Raymond Thomas, Simon Blanchet, Ryan Marquardt, Sky Vied, Romain Paulus, Panot, Erik Edelmann, Bennet, James Zavaleta, Ulrike Baumann, Ian Martyn, Justin Faist, Jeff Miller, Stephen Lawson, Howard Stratton, George Greene, Panthea Madjidi, Nicholas Gentry, Sergios Tsakatikas, Bruno Filippi, Sergio Tsakatikas, Qarion, Pedro Flores, Raymond Thomas, Marco Antonio Barcellos Junior, David Beitler, Rick Gerritzen, Sailcat, Mark Kemp, Éric Martin, Leo Barudi, Piotr Chmielowski, Suzanne Jacobs, Johann Goergen, Darren Rennels, Caio Fernandes, Iddo Berger, Peter Nikitin, Brent Werner, Fiona de Visser, Carl Saloga, Edward Wilson, Kevin Law, David Lecount, Joshua Philgarlic, Thomas Mitchell, Mahmoud Hashemi, and Fatimahl for their generous Patreon support.
Music:
"Hon Kyoku" by Doug Maxwell/ Zac Zinger
"Sax Attack" by Dougie Wood.
"In Case You Forgot" by Otis McDonald.
"Chess Pieces" by Silent Partner.

[@sergiocerina7876]

The uzbek one totally said "Uzbekistan"

[@prisminc158]

Sergio Celina, Yeah I heard it too.

[@petra123987]

And the Russian one mentioned "Russian Federation"

[@Michael-vs1mw]

leipero, more like Rassiyskaya Fidiratsiya :D

[@Andrij_Kozak]

he said "Uzbekiston" which means Uzbekistan in Uzbek language.

[@angeliquemarx3132]

Andrij S uzbekistan in uzbek is O'zbekiston

[@TheIlustrado]

"Whenever I have no idea what any of the words are, it's Danish." 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

[@papaquonis]

DrSunTzu Yeah, that was pretty good. As a Dane, I've definitely heard that before.

[@alexwei3124]

For me it´s Danish when it sounds a bit as Northern Dutch, but I don´t understand anything or just very few words :DDD

[@curiousgiraffe9172]

DrSunTzu Danish is Swedish if you have a muffin in your mouth

[@andypre1667]

I thought it was Norwegian with a potato in your mouth... :D

[@alexwei3124]

before watching this flick i had no idea how Norwegian sounds 😂 but it was surprisingly smooth and pleasant, that it was

[@soralb6368]

Ossetic is the language of Northern Osseatia, which is a part of Russia and Southern Osseatia which is a break-away region of Georgia. It is an Iranian language and a decedant of the Scythian language. I think it is the only living northern Iranian language. It would be a nice subject for a video I guess. Or you can make one about Iranian languges in General. Keep up the good work.

[@Kurdedunaysiri]

Ossetic is a north-eastern Iranian language like Yaghnobi and many others.

[@thegodofthegods1084]

It's an Iranian Language Descendent of the Scythians

[@rodrigodealencar323]

you don't need to focus. you need to langfocus.

[@kensley94]

HA!!!!

[@mysaviourjesus4134]

Rodrigo de Alencar lol

[@awsomemodels]

Lol 😂😂

[@ingwerschorle_]

Lang is the german word for long. Makes it even better

[@primeroyal7434]

Lang, focus.

[@camiloaa]

I like you use same criterion as me: "I don't understand a word, it must be Danish."

[@RichieLarpa]

Yes, funny assumption. When I decide for Danish, I do it because I hear strong influence from German language, which could be true, if they lie next to each other.

[@heynyquildriver]

Yeah, I speak a good chunk of Danish so i did understand a bunch of the words, but it just sounds different from Norwegian or Swedish, more of those back of the throat sounds. Potato language.

[@Bjowolf2]

@@RichieLarpa No, just some borrowed German words and some loan translations ( using similar constructs for the bigger words), many of them distorted almost beyond recognition now - and it doesn't sound like German at all, only some sounds do here and there. Most (basic) words by far are however very similar to their Norwegian and Swedish counterparts ( c. 95 % & 85 % ) - and even to their English ones ( around half of the Germanic ( OE + ON ) part of English! ). And the same goes for the grammar, which is far simpler than that of German - and even has many similarities with that of a basic older English ( without the use of "do" and "-ing" with verbs ).

[@Bjowolf2]

@Christian Luong Larsson Of course you do - the vocabularies of those two languages are 95 % the "same", the Norwegian folks are just poor spellers 😂

[@dan74695]

@@Bjowolf2 Like half of Danish's vocabulary is from Low German, and the pronunciation sounds German-influenced to me, it sounds like Drunk Low German or something.

[@tizianodematteis7071]

Ossetic is an Iranian language spoken in the Caucasus region that has been heavily influenced by Caucasian languages and Russian!

[@PedroAguiar]

This answer should be displayed as the first one. :-)

Dari is not „Old Persian“, it's a modern language. Ossetic is not like Dari, Tajiki or Farsi, it's more related to Pashto, Yaghnob and, well, that's it, the „Easterna subgroup“ of the Iranian languages is not large. Ossetic has no language intelligible without much learning, it's more like an isolate (it is not in terms of genealogical classification, of course).

[@calvinyahn2840]

And when Russia invaded Georgia back in 2008, it was to protect the unrecognized country of South Ossetia within Georgia's official borders.

[@scaper8]

Calvin Yahn Oh god! Now that you mention South Ossetia it's perfectly clear, buf i never made a connection before! :-)

[@robertandersson1128]

+Tiziano de matteis I've got to say, it's a really interesting language! It has interesting phonology. From reading a bit on Wikipedia, I was familiar with Ossetic even before watching the video, but still...Now I know how it sounds!

[@memelordmarcus]

"Now I will fail and embarrass myself in front of you all." You are now officially a youtuber.

[@headcanon6408]

The most famous philosophers of all time: Plato Aristotle Mickey

[@zooblestyx]

In Sweden, Danish is referred to not as a language, but a throat condition. ^_^

[@AttractorsAltAccount]

Hahahahahaahhahaaahahahahahahhahahahah! I Get It! I Live In Sweden, And the Potato Mouth Thing Joke. AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[@AttractorsAltAccount]

(Lays Down In Floor, Eyes Open, Like When You Lie Like Garbage In Undertale)

[@Haaklong]

We have the same with Frisian. (^_^)

[@jez9999]

Swedish sounds weirder. You guys have this rising intonation at the end of words.

[@AttractorsAltAccount]

Tack För Att Göra Mig Ledsen.

[@hatalarm3760]

Paul, even if you're not a polyglot, you help and encourage others to pursue language and the love and study of it. Your videos are always entertaining and informative, and I absolutely love this game! Keep up the good work!

[@samguy7654]

John Ishan Shah He technically is a polyglot though, even though he doesn't like to be called that.

[@vuhdeem]

The trick to differentiate Polish from Russian is that Polish consists of continuous "psh" "sh" and "ch" sounds. The Ukrainians call Polish people "Psheki" in a slang reference.

[@vladd896]

Vadim the Russians called them so, I mean that name came from Russia but still is used among Ukrainians too

[@amilyeliza8407]

We call Polish people 'Polandio' in Bengali (Bangladesh).

[@ash_phoenix3282]

And the w sounding ł

[@millie5205]

isn't it pejorative?

[@EUGEN093]

@@millie5205 it is

[@samovarmaker9673]

the Russian one actually said "Российской Федерации" (Rossiyskoy Federatsiyi), which roughly means 'of the Russian Federation'

[@parthiancapitalist2733]

Samovar maker. Of the Union of socialist Soviet republics

[@user-bd4oc9jt9e]

The dude in the recording tolked about politics, as far as I can tell

[@Thinkingman69]

Samovar maker roughly? You mean exactly ?

[@sobanya_228]

Yes. And Uzbek said "Uzbekiston"

[@RichieLarpa]

I thought I was poor linguist, but as a Czech, I can almost immediately understand Slavic languages. Russian and Ukrainian was too easy for me in that case...

[@liamskeen2884]

In in the uzbek one i heard the word "uzbekistan"

[@Olebrucanism]

Me too

[@andypre1667]

And in the Russian one the speaker said российская федерация.

[@enesozdemir4085]

Andrej Prevodach mean?

[@andypre1667]

"Russian Federation" - pronounced rossiyskaya federatsiya.

[@samguy7654]

Andrej Prevodach I don't think many none Russian speakers could catch that.

[@edatube7616]

you've got a very wise dog there

[@Langfocus]

Mickey is all-knowing.

[@pischpilot]

can you please make a video about the scots language or yiddish ?

[@lsquad]

+Langfocus Can u make Albania language and its Illyrian and Pellasgic ancestors lang. :)

[@oortclouddomicile]

Dalai Dogma

[@mansuralmutawa-9824]

Dogfucius

[@kokuasama]

Hello, I am 17 and I know Kazakh, because it's my native language. I also speak Russian due to the fact that I live in country, which was the part of Soviet Union. I think in both of them. I have been learning English for 3 years. Sometimes there are some problems with articles, but I find a lot of similar vocabulary between Russian and English, so it helps me a little. Today, I have scored 6,5 in my IELTF examination. Paul, I want to say you: thank you from Kazakhstan. Your channel and works are amazing, facinating and really great. I start to be inreresred in linguistics because of you. Nowadays, I am going to learn the Ancient Greek and improve my English skills. I wish I had teacher as you. :D

[@feihe2053]

Ossetic is actually an Indo-Iranian language, not a Slavic language.

[@Langfocus]

Yeah, I've learned that since playing the game.

[@mp6471]

何非 Iranian

[@denalihedgehog]

@@Langfocus but it kinda makes sense, since Ossetia is partly in Russia, and Ossetian has a lot of Russian influence.

[@AKHalex]

"I don't know what the hell they are saying, so it's probably Danish" Hahaha, made me laugh!

[@Bjowolf2]

Vi kan sende Paul en bombe for hans mobning af de Danske _ord_. Maybe he wil understand that then? 😂

[@Bjowolf2]

@ꅏꑀꁲꈜꑀ꒒ 😂😂😂 But then we shouldn't mention what Swedish men sound like, should we? 🙄 Or Norwegians when they get excited? 😂😂😂

[@Bjowolf2]

@ꅏꑀꁲꈜꑀ꒒ Nice try, but we don't use ß, ë, ö, ð, and ï in DK 😂

[@GarfieldRex]

the Uzbek said Uzbekistan, the spanish one said Paraguay, the Russian said Russian Federation. wtf this game

[@koumei1709]

hausa one said boko haram and also mentioned muhamudu buhari(president of nigeria)

[@auzakov1977]

D I am Uzbek.

[@auzakov1977]

Lucifer Salom., Calesan / Calesis? Yashemasis? Tuzumasis? I am from Tashkent so the language might be different.

[@artnemiz1]

And yet the Swahili one said Bagdad

[@awsomemodels]

@@artnemiz1 the way they say baghdad 😂 but sadly i think it got mentioned in bad news which is annoying lol

[@CanadaMills]

Really enjoying your channel, which I only discovered about a week ago. Informative, humorous, and with humility! Thanks/merci/obrigada/blagodarya!

[@Langfocus]

Thanks! I appreciate it. 🙂🙏🏻

[@ruthgoh4869]

"One of those super polyglots selling e-books" 😂😂😂 savage

[@Cassxowary]

* scratches that off my career goal list * 😂😂😂

[@ignemuton5500]

Ossetic is an Iranian language spoken near Georgia.

[@camerkiddo]

that dog part was hilarious,and the video was great. thank you!

[@Langfocus]

My pleasure! I'm glad you liked it!

[@camerkiddo]

Langfocus 😊

[@MrSnow-qn1ij]

blackpink bts kpop anime lover YOUR USERNAME.

[@xcyt1888]

Hey I didn't see any dog, could you please post the time on video where we can see his dog?

[@camerkiddo]

A User thank u. I'm also a fellow ReVulv. And HEY FAM!!

[@hankat2]

It was funny how in the Finnish one at the beginning the speaker used a lot of English loan words, for example; pointti = point, and ideoita = ideas. Hearing those words some might have thought it was an Indo-European language. Good job on getting that one right!

[@Bjowolf2]

They are probably loans via Swedish - there is a large Swedish speaking minority in Finland, access to Swedish TV for decades and many Finns go to Sweden next door for work and studies etc.

[@SocialistFinn1]

@@Bjowolf2 I think those particular words he mentioned might actually be more recent English loanwords, but I get what you're saying.

[@PaulVinonaama]

@@SocialistFinn1 Hah! Idea is neither recent nor English. Try Greek.

[@saladman6434]

LMAO! I love how he pronounced Jacksepticeye at 1:05. I know it was intentional, but it was funny lol

[@rayaasl]

"I don't understand what the hell they're saying, so I think it's Danish" sound about right!

[@MrDirtBaggins]

Do a vid on Ossetic please

[@1nopoint]

MrDirtBaggins Or on all Iranian Languages to be more broad.

[@Vank4o]

"Arabic family language" what tf does this even mean?! Ossetic is an Eastern Iranian language, it's an Indo-European language and nothing in its prosody sounds even remotely similar to any Semitic language. How do you get this is beyond me.

[@yourmajesty1361]

leipero Actually Ossetic has barely any arabic loanword

I think I am ready to help with that :)

[@hansdejong8733]

Vjaĉesláv Ivanov mi renkontas vin ĉie

[@haydenhigginbotham6551]

Focus, Paul. Focus. Langfocus.

[@J11_boohoo]

you know in tagalog "focus lang" means "just focus"

[@Jdebrusk987]

Your dog was savage..

[@Xanthas998]

Mickey don't screw around

[@bishallol7375]

the website is now down because of you lol

[@Langfocus]

lol, they should probably host their website on a real server, not shared hosting. I can only wonder what happened when Pewdiepie made his video.

[@ghenulo]

Someone will have to rename "the Slashdot effect" to "the Paul effect".

[@belbel91]

Ah so that's why I couldn't play it! I just played along with the video

[@namingisdifficult408]

Bishal Lol wow

[@marcooros9103]

Which website?

[@valtschef2797]

I enjoyed this video a lot! 1. Ukrainian sample has a hard diaspora accent, Canadian I suppose. 2. What?! You don't know what Ossetic is? =) Ossetic IN NOT Slavic language. It is Iranic but sounds a bit similarly to Russian due to its prosodia.

[@Langfocus]

Yeah, that must be what threw me off. I looked up Ossetic after the game and it made sense.

[@dmytro732]

I'm from western Ukraine but live in the US. I right away knew it was Ukrainian but I could recognize a lot of the pronunciation mistakes that Ukrainian Americans make. I suppose they're pretty similar across Ukrainians living in English speaking countries.

[@user-qr6qs4ox2z]

I knew right away it was Ukranian, but the prononciation hinted at Bulgarian as well ...

[@valtschef2797]

Ossetic albeit is Iranic, is very distant from 'mainstream' Iranic tongues. Ukrainian actually is similar to Russian in some its varieties, especially eastern. But western has its particular pronunciation, intonation. Moreover, this very accent, I suppose, is a 100 years old conserved Western dialect. And this dialect REALLY differs from Russian and isn't similar to it whatsoever.

[@valtschef2797]

This 'americanized' accent sounds horrible to me as to a fluent Ukrainian speaker :)

[@bliss9595]

The Ukrainian one had a strong Western accent, it is very unusual pronunciation, even though I speak Ukrainian natively.

[@olek609]

It's Ukrainian as spoken in Australia based on the accent, some words and the fact that he talks about banking in Australia

[@Miezientsev]

It's seems like Canadian diaspora sreaker

[@Zoombieknr1]

I'm bad at distinguishing between Russian and Ukrainian, but in this case it sounded much similar to Yugoslavian languages so it had to be Ukrainian since it sounds more "soft" than Russian.

[@soyjoyy]

Yeah, lol, he sounded a little bit like an Eastener trying to mock Western Ukrainians with this over-exaggerated accent and too many wrong stresses.

[@jollycomputer9748]

@@soyjoyy I believe easterners sound more surzhik, but westerners just go wrong stresses with ukrainian words

[@charliemclegend4885]

I don't expect comedy from your channel, but i always get a few chuckles from your videos :)

[@billkelly8222]

An Alsatian (dog) goes into a telegraph office and asks the clerk for a form. The dog writes: woof woof woof, woof woof woof, woof woof woof. The clerk says, "I notice you plan to send nine woofs. We're having a special this week, and you can send ten woofs for the same price." The dog replies, "But that wouldn't make any sense."

[@rokivulovic7598]

i don't get it

[@alwaysuseless]

Brilliant!

[@klaaswijnsma122]

I love it

[@PicklePickle7]

This video is different and awesome. I like the idea!

[@ronizuckerman7785]

totally unrelated, why do i see you everywhere i go

[@LinkToon000]

UltraWorlds i see him too. literally on 75% of the history videos i click on

[@aamirchhapra3700]

me too

[@PicklePickle7]

UltraWorlds LinkToon000 Aamir Chhapra It might not be a coincidence though. Do you guys know the "history of the entire world I guess" video by bill wurtz? I saw the video within hours of it is release and left a comment. There was more than 8000 comments. Yet one dude named "marvelfannumber1'" found my commen. I knew him from before, I often find and talk to him. He found my comment on the bill wurtz cideo and replied to it. My comment had no likes and it was likely at the bottom. I asked him how he did it and he said, and I quote: "It was simply the first one that showed up for some reason." , out of 8000+ comments. A lot of people told me that I am pretty much everywhere. But could it be because of some sort of system in youtube you guys find my comments? Or maybe not. Anyway the "marvelfannumber1" thing was not normal.

[@aamirchhapra3700]

what is your video-to-comment ratio?

[@RoyMcAvoy]

This channel should win an award on one of the most useful and informative channel on KZbin

[@alwaysuseless]

What I enjoyed most about this video is all your sharing about your process of narrowing the answer down. I think anyone who watches this video will benefit by scoring higher on the Language Game and on your Mystery Language videos, and more generally by gaining a greater appreciation of the variety of languages!

[@Fin4L6are]

LOL you broke their website.

[@sergiupopescu5057]

Yep - confirmed - the site is unreachable

[@elisalongobardi4742]

jackspedicy lol

[@annafernando6816]

I love The Great Language Game. It's REALLY hard when they put closely-related languages as choices - - the Slavic ones get me every time!

[@nehcooahnait7827]

I can’t tell the difference between Ukrainian and Russian 😭

[@ashleyd4563]

This was a really fun video! I think it might help me a bit when I go to play The Great Language Game myself. I noticed that the further you get the more choices they give you!

[@Langfocus]

Thanks! I'm glad you liked it. I've played it a couple more times since and it varies quite a lot. They must have some kind of randomizing algorithm.

[@thomasfrench914]

11:38 I guess you could say you need to LANGfocus. I don't know, that was terrible. I apologise.

[@oldcowbb]

you stole my joke

[@PicklePickle7]

nice new haircut Paul!

[@Langfocus]

Thank you!

[@hirsi8073]

Could you do somali it has a rich history and is quite amazing

[@sonhadorpr]

Langfocus So you live in Japan? Awesome dude!

[@adambrickley9088]

That was fun! Looking forward to your in depth exploration of Ossetic. :-)

[@jossarch367]

"I don't understand what the hell they're saying so I think it's Danish" This is a thought I've had a few times myself when eavesdropping on someone in a public place who is speaking a language in other than English.

[@Bjowolf2]

But actually with many deep similarities with English - for historical reasons 😉

[@poolina7566]

I think you didn't get Russian because the man had a bit of a speech defect ☺

[@birdsmeet]

Great video Paul, I had so much fun watching :) By the way, I have transcribed the Turkish audio sample. It goes: “...içinde içki varmış gibi ve sarhoş taklidi yaparak yolda yürüyor, böyle bir alışveriş merkezi gibi bir yerin ortasında yürüyor, ve işte otobüse gitmek istediğini filan söylüyor karşısına çıkan insanlara. Hollywood'da galiba oluyor olay. Tabii buradaki erkekler, şey, daha yengeç, yani artık kartal moduna geçiyor millet...” which roughly means: "...as if there was a drink in it and she walks, pretending to be drunk, in the middle of a place like a shopping mall, and she says that she wants to get on a bus or something. I think it happened in Hollywood. Of course, the men act like hunting eagles (meaning they tried to take advantage of the girl's drunkenness)..." I guess he is talking about the “drunk girl in public (social experiment)” video. But he is talking kinda fast so I can understand why it wasn’t so obvious that it was in Turkish.

[@Jayako12]

We need another one of these!

[@angelswings1219]

I'm loving the closed captions trying their best to make sense of what they are captioning! I watch a lot of subtitled films and series and even though I don't speak anything other than English sometimes I question what they are translating. Frequently in period dramas they use modern terminology such as in a 20's series they used the term Ms when I know it was not around until the 60's or later. In the case of some films where there is a little English sprinkled in I see they are not always putting what they are saying.

[@lewis9159]

I knew it was hausa when it mentioned 'Boko Haram'

[@peterfireflylund]

The musical bit at the beginning also sounded African.

[@maxben3391]

I think they also mentioned Muhammadu Buhari, the President of Nigeria.

[@vladd896]

gcf xnbv same though I've no idea what does it means, I've just heard these words in African context before.

[@Vero_la_fea]

I don't know if I'll forgive you thinking Russian is Polish :'(

[@ylntsdynp251]

Vickynella They sound a bit the same though that's why he failed . I like polish language

[@Vero_la_fea]

Heeey :D Don't make me more angry xd

[@loller0815]

Carpe Diem literally this

[@Artur_M.]

I think it might depend on vocabulary. It's actually a second time this week I hear someone saying that Polish sounds a bit French. It confused me at first, but I'm pretty sure it's because of the nasal vowels and the voiced sibilants (French "j" /ʒ/ - voiced palato-alveolar sibilant being very similar to Polish "ż" or "rz"/ ʐ/ - voiced retroflex sibilant, and kind of to "ź" /ʑ/ voiced alveolo-palatal sibilant). Also yes, confusing Polish with Russian is one of easiest ways to "trigger" a Pole :)

The Russian examples are not very clear, both of them (the first one is even with an accent). But that's fair, most of the examples are radio pieces (and that makes the game close to real life guessing a language).

[@nHans]

Oh boy, that brought back memories! I'm a technology consultant, and I travel a lot to meet clients in different countries. I can't tell you how many times I've woken up jet-lagged in my hotel room, to the sound of gibberish coming from the radio-alarm! 🤣

[@FaboGz]

Great video Paul!!!!! Make it a series (?

[@idanzamir7540]

Your sense of humor and personality are so unique, that is really amazing to me.

[@recklessroges]

I also enjoy Paul's videos. If you are interested in languages you might like to know that there are not degrees of uniqueness; Something is unique or it isn't, "so unique" ironically is such a common mistake and isn't unique.

[@idanzamir7540]

Reckless Roges Interesting! in my language the equivalent of "unique" is totally on a spectrum. but you're right, in english it is silly to think that something is "uniquer" than something. :-)

[@DallasVierra]

Very creative Paul! I reallyn enjoy this type of content, in addition to your normal wonderful language profiles.

[@nishantgaidhani9001]

That Hindi part was funny for me... i am a native speaker of both Hindi and Marathi

[@AlexWindsor]

Thanks for the link Paul - I am quite good at this game because I spend a lot of time on busses in south London.

[@jacekwesoowski1484]

I think the two easiest distinctions between Polish and Russian are the stress pattern and the "singing l". The stress in Polish always falls on the penultimate syllable (and when it occasionally doesn't, speaking like it does isn't a big mistake), whereas in Russian there's more variation. The "singing l" is absent from Polish entirely. There's just the regular l and w you know from English (though to make things more complicated the w sound is spelt 'ł' and the letter 'w' is pronounced 'v').

[@user-bd4oc9jt9e]

No, it's actually the crappy sound quality and the presence of the word "бlyaт"

[@andres6868]

Ossetic is a language spoken in the Caucasus, it is an Iranian language, thus related to Farsi

[@Wolffielp]

Hey Paul, I like your videos a lot! Could you make a video about Grimm's law? I think it is an interesting topic and it shows clearly that English can be classified as a Germanic language. Greetings from Germany

[@klt777]

It is more entertaining to play along with you. I was stumped at almost all the same samples. Love the intro with the pooch.

[@Wilddornrose]

I played along with you in the video and I realized - because I had so many right - that I learned sooooo much about languages from you. I recognize the differences between slavic, germanic and romance languages, I heard the sound of portuguese. I know how african languages might sound (klicks and pauses between consonants), and I heard the tones of the vietnamese. Thank you for teaching me to recognize languages and generally have fun at it. You were the ultimate motivation to finally go and register for a finnish course so that I'll learn the language of my boyfriend. Btw _ totally able to pick that up in the example :D

[@martfp88]

9:54 ... you have to... Langfocus? :D

At least two jokes about that among the comments :)))

[@CaliforniaBrowngrass]

Thanks! I had great fun playing this!

[@CaliforniaBrowngrass]

Rats. I played the extra medium game (with threescore less two languages) and got 800 twice. The one that I felt bad about was choosing Slovenian over Latvian.

[@user-rt1ge9dl7n]

I've just finished playing this game and my score is 1850! Thank you so much for showing such a good game!

[@izabelagizdra6250]

I guessed the Russian after 3 seconds.I'm a language master! :D Nah,I am kidding,I am just Polish :P

[@ochenkrasivy86]

miss independence im learning polish)))

[@cutecommie]

How to identify a Russian: look for the ")))".

[@izabelagizdra6250]

cool! :D

[@deltoroperdedor3166]

miss independence I don't even speak any Slavic languages, but I immediately recognised Russian. Must be the Balkanic PTSD

[@Rofel_Wodring]

When I played this I guessed russian but it was polish :(

[@williamrhodes8059]

This is amazing!

[@johnfox17]

You're a humble gentleman. Thank you, I enjoyed the video.

[@JHaras]

You beat me! Well done =D I felt cocky when you missed on Russian, which I have studied, but you regained it on your Swahili guesses. I "lost" by one playing alongside you, missed out just before. I am a language geek who can speak several, but I'm evidently not an expert at pinpointing languages that are obscure to me. Lastly, being Swedish I think that the selection of languages gave me a big advantage also, given the high prevalence of Nordic languages.

[@Shanedeliveryi]

I love this guy, he's so relatable!!❤️

[@ArturoStojanoff]

9:54 "I'm getting tired I have to focus". Would you say you have to... LANGfocus???? eeeeeeeh

[@awsomemodels]

Lol

[@HaiderAlZubaidi]

Beautiful game! And, I had very similar guessing as yours :)

[@SLACKLINEDUDE]

the beginning was amazing, won my respect

[@Mertiy7]

Dude as a Turkish I've never heard spoken Uzbek before and this was so weird. I couldn't guess Uzbek but after you guessed it right I listened to it again and after focusing I picked Turkic and Arabic words with an alien pronunciation. I think I need to study some other Turkic languages

[@inuitatsumi]

Oh, I had thought that Turkish people understand a little Uzbek...but I guess I was wrong.

[@inuitatsumi]

+yağmur seven I see :) So you can't only understand some of written Uzbek, but also some of written other Turkic languages, I guess...

[@inuitatsumi]

+yağmur seven Ooooh thank you for giving me the information :) As for Japanese, we hardly understand spoken Ryukyuan languages (even written ones) which belong to Japonic family , but Ryukyu islands are in Japan and it seems they speak Japanese instead of them in resent years.

[@seda5112]

inui tatsumi Well at first listening to uzbek it feels kinda weird and like a different language but after like 20 seconds when you get you understand what is spoken slightly you understand its uzbek and if you still being listening or hearing to it after like some minutes you mostly understand and try to talk your speech fits to it

for me I know it's Uzbek because it sound like Turkish but it's not Turkish lmao

[@shaunwong158]

@Langfocus I guess because of your recommendation, the website can't handle the traffic any more lol

[@Langfocus]

Yeah, they really should have their website on a better server. They must have the $5 hostgator plan. lol

[@flugschulerfluglehrer7139]

You win! Congrats!

[@MonDieuMaCauseMonEpee]

Woah I didn't even know this website existed, This is Awesome you did a great job too.

[@CalvinLimuel]

Some of them have some obvious clues like in the Uzbek clip the guy said Uzbekistan haha

[@hansdejong8733]

Where are you guys from? I'm from the Netherlands

[@ijthecuber9288]

Hans De Jong 🇦🇺:)

[@zheka1780]

Hans De Jong 🇰🇿

[@jinengi]

Hans De Jong Catalonia ^^

[@pauljmorton]

Finland!

[@giorgioj4557]

Guillem lm is this Spain?

[@markandersh]

That language game was awesome. I got most of the ones you did and missed most of the same, and from your comments I was doing the same thing you were doing: looking for phonetic patterns where I didn't know the language. I have been around Russian enough and speak a bit of Russian so I picked those examples up where you missed one. What was important to me was that I was doing the same thing you were. Even where I didn't know a language, if I picked up phonetic qualities that I knew belonged to a language group, I narrowed it down.

[@HarborFighter]

Best video yet! My favourite game - makes waiting in airport lounges around the world a little more fun!

[@elimalinsky7069]

Ossetic is the only living language descended from a Scythian language, more specifically Sarmatian or Alanic. It belongs to the East Iranian branch of Indo-European and is considered extremely conservative. Ossetic was instrumental in reconstructing Proto-Indo-Iranian and Proto-Indo-European at that. Ossetia is an autonomous republic within the Russian Federation (some of it is in Georgia and this Ossetian-Georgian territory has been claimed by Russia since 2008). It is situated in the North Caucasus region between Circassia and Ingush-Chechnya. The Ossetians are predominantly Orthodox Christians and are the only Iranian ethnic group practicing Christianity.

[@t-mag3004]

Speaking of Norwegian & Danish, When are you gonna make a comparison video on the two??

[@dollasquaredtv7885]

T-Mag 3004 He made a video comparing Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish

[@whitewhite2410]

This was very interesting to watch. i really like it.

[@user-azhar124]

I liked that, u r a knowledgeable one, and share that with ppl, i learnt a lot of ur vedios, specifically in listening cuz I'm non native English, although it's an extensive topic, and may some ppl think that hard, but with u it's different, شكرًا ❤️❤️💐

[@Dyomaeth]

Hey Paul, congrats, this is actually a really high score! On Ossetic, it's actually a language from the Iranic language group and it's almost nothing to do with Slavic languages. A video on it would certainly be very interesting. Greetings from Bulgaria!

[@weibinren92]

Dyomaeth They are both satem languages, of indoeuropean family, so they are somewhat related

[@AXimab]

I could have sworn it was Russian.

[@TheIamtheoneandonly1]

“The worlds most famous and popular language is music.” - Psy. 🎵🎵🎵

[@Langfocus]

I like PSY 👍

[@michelamarcellino4029]

You're great, Paul 💪💪💪

[@clkoinonia]

Its strange as I followed you in your test we were even (made the same amount of mistakes but with different languages)- but it depends totally on the samples you get. On my own the result differs a lot. If you know the language family tree and they show you two options which are related like Swedish/ Norwegian or Slovakian /Czech its just a game of chance. I recognized Turkish in your test quickly but in mine I had an other sample and failed. -- Thank you for introducing this, its great!!!

[@MrNickTube1]

HUEHUEHUE Mickey is BR

[@theawesomesausage]

huehue gibe doge treats plos

[@celsorosajunior]

And he plays online games!

[@sofiacarestiato367]

Fala povo BR

[@enthusia492]

Have you ever considered doing a video on the languages of India? Hindi, Tamil, Gujarati, Telugu, Marathi, Punjabi, etc. I've known for awhile that there are many different languages throughout the region, but i've never really known the differences between them or what makes them culturally distinctive other than their locations within Indian States.

[@elborrador333]

There's nothing very interesting about the differences between the Indo-Aryan languages (Hindi, Guj, Punj, Marathi). They seem to have evolved from older "Prakrit" languages, which were common speech "corrupted" languages that existed in parallel to the "refined" Sanskrit in different regional areas. Some have diverged more recently than others and use different writing scripts, so the level of mutual intelligibility depends on that. India was just a bunch of warring kingdoms and princely states cut off from each other before unification after WW2, so each region had a different culture and language that was distinct, although all Hindu. Dravidian languages like Tamil and Telugu are a different language group altogether, probably derived from languages spoken by Indian natives before they were pushed southwards by the Indo-Aryan invasion. They have a lot of Sanskrit loanwords and influence, weren't affected by the Persian/Arabic influences from Muslim invasions in northern Indian, and seem to have influenced development of nearby Indo-Aryan languages like Marathi. I don't think the Dravidian languages are mutually intelligible either. They use different writing scripts as well, although all abugidas.

[@Maj33y1]

This is intriguing and fun ... but the Quality isn't always alright ... Great video idea enjoyed it !!! hope this won't be a one time thing

[@stormmaashrooms]

Great video, I like how it's different, similar to gameplay, and more humourous than your other more information-centered videos are. I just have one question/request. Do you ever plan on covering major South Asian languages or maybe just the region South Asia 's languages in one or multiple videos?

[@Langfocus]

I've done one on Hindi and Urdu. I'll do more sometime, but it depends on my motivation. I choose topics based on what engages me most at the moment, because my major videos take so much time and effort that if I'm not totally into the topic, it's really hell.

[@stormmaashrooms]

Alright, Thanks for the reply!

[@kennethmcintyre9449]

Hey Paul! Can you please do a video on the Jamaican Patois i would really appreciate that! :)

[@grampton]

Ossetic is an Iranian language.

[@maninblack115]

Descendant of Scythian

[@jasminalagic564]

Really nice video, I really liked dog joke, great ending. I like the app, I used to play it sometime in 2014, I hope that app was improved by new inputs in the meantime :)

[@baltulielkungsgunarsmiezis9714]

As someone who can speak russian it was so ammusing hearing a perfectly good paragrapth and then you say its not russians and click polish, I mean you and I bough heard Rassiskaja Federacija in the recording itself. When you called turkis ossetian it was also very strange since I know that ossetian is a very europian language, and that obviously sounded like a turkik language.

[@Rick58Rowland]

Dang! I only got 250 on the same before I came back and watched you play it!

[@benjibean8431]

"Jackspedicy" yes

[@greggo7371]

The sound the last syllable does in norwegian is so beautiful that's why i love this language