The Great Language Game

Hugely enjoyable.
http://greatlanguagegame.com/

I only got an 800. I simply CANNOT tell the Slavic languages apart.

I got a timeout after submitting my second answer. Guess it is getting hit pretty hard.

Well, poo, my work browser doesn't support the audio tag. Guess I'll have to wait until I get home to play.

600, in part because I didn't realize languages could repeat.

What a great game!

800 - the minute the asian languages start, it's guess all the way...

Managed to guess my way to 950, but only because I got lucky with a couple of weird ones (Bangla). Doesn't Danish sound extraordinary?! I was surprised not to meet Portuguese, which is a nice tricky one as it can sound rather like Polish to the untrained ear.

6: I was surprised not to meet Portuguese, which is a nice tricky one as it can sound rather like Polish to the untrained ear.
Do you think? Gosh!
You're not the first person to say that, and I think it's amazing, because I'm portuguese, and for me polish sounds very much alien (even if I know german) and so very different to my mother tongue :)

(I got 2 portuguese questions in my attempt, so that was easy hehe)

#7

Well you know what to look for.

Actually I agree with you. Polish is from a completely different language group to Portuguese. There are some completely different sounds. I am generally pretty good at languages I have heard - both Polish and Portuguese fall in to that group (lots of ex-pats, although more Poles than Portuguese, in and around Peterborough*).

* And despite the muck-raking in the Daily Fail etc there are very few problems resulting from the immigration.

It has never even occurred to me that Polish and Portuguese might sound alike, though I guess that's true. I am perpetually surprised by how much slightly fuzzy, overheard Polish sounds like French to my ears, though I hear Polish fairly regularly in Chicago and I speak French. But I don't know how many times I've thought "Oh, another French-speak...no, that's Polish."

Polish and Portuguese share nasal vowels, which can be misleading. Similarly, I have to listen closely to tell Dutch and Hebrew apart, because the first impression of guttural consonants is so similar.

ETA: French also has the nasals, of course.

As well as nasal vowels, Portuguese is full of "sh" sounds which makes it sound more like Polish (or Czech), despite the distance of the relationship.

You're not the first person to say that, and I think it's amazing, because I'm portuguese, and for me polish sounds very much alien (even if I know german) and so very different to my mother tongue :)

It's all the voiced sh sounds, and the like. I agree. I remember hearing it when I was about 14--finding a radio station in Boston that was probably for the local Portuguese community and thinking it was something Slavic.

It's getting an Internal Server error every time I try it. Is it working now for anyone?

It seems to be working now. Interesting . . .