Jump to content
Linguaholic

Help identify older eastern European language?


Recommended Posts

This is a song which my grandmother sung recently, she doesn't know the language. She said her mother taught her this song and said never to say it in public (maybe it is explicit or offensive, sorry if it is). Her mother was from Austria-Hungary and spoke the same language as her father from east Romania/west Ukraine if that is any help. I have consulted some Russian speakers and they said maybe it is Polish, and my grandmother suspected this as well. Thanks for any help!

misclanguage.mp3

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It sounds more like Yugoslavian or something like that.

I did recognise like 2 words in this song, so it's not as much of a spectacular answer I'm afraid.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Was the portion which you understood "za kawałek sera" at the very end? It is possible that her pronunciation is just very odd and it is indeed Polish, although I take your word that it isn't since you are fluent and I only know a few words. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"za kawałek sera" is Polish indeed, meaning "for a piece of cheese".

But if pronunciation is an issue, then maybe some written lyrics could help.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

I know it's not Croatian/ Serbian/ Bosnian, considering that these three are similar. It is also not Slovenian. I don't know about other "Yugoslavia" countries. I had heard both Albanian and Macedonian being spoken and I didn't think the recording sounded like these two either, but I am not very familiar with either of them, so I can't really be sure. I hope this helps, at least in narrowing it down. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for helping narrow it down more, this is starting to seem like either it is an obscure language or she has a very heavy accent in a more common language. I'll update if I get more clues

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

I finally figured it out, it's Ukrainian. The transcription is "гиґі була молада, гиґі була щера, гиґі дала тент аренда за коволок сира". I hadn't known how similar Ukrainian and Polish are, but it makes sense that the two had slight mutual intelligibility; in the case of " za kawałek sera" and "за коволок сира". Thanks for helping narrow it down!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Good job!
I'm surprised to see this fact too, I never knew we could understand Ukrainians a bit, considering Polish belongs to the west-Slavonic family and Ukrainian belongs to the east-Slavonic family.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...