I have a bit of an ear for language and so I was eavesdropping on a fellow carrying on a lively phone conversation at an office today in a familiar-sounding language. I could only hear about every third or fourth word distinctly, but the rhythm and inflection sounded awfully familiar. As I listened, it sounded alternately like Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian, with the overall impression being closer to Italian. But it wasn't any of the those three and it wasn't Esperanto.
So, I cheated and asked. The answer surprised me but made perfect sense since it was a related language to those three. Any educated guesses? No, sorry, it wasn't Cajun and it wasn't French, either.
My first guess would be Catalan.
Romanian?
Cheers,
Henry
> Romanian?
It did in fact turn out to be Romanian. Surprised the hell out of me to learn that it was actually one of the Romance languages in the same family as Spanish and Italian.
> > Romanian?
>
> It did in fact turn out to be Romanian. Surprised the hell out of me to learn that it was actually one of the Romance languages in the same family as Spanish and Italian.
I've actually done the same thing. I vaguely knew a couple of Romanians that I played indoor soccer with years ago. I was confused too until I asked. They had no problem understanding Spanish spoken by others on the field.
I was also surprised to learn that ROMAnian was a ROMAnce language, quickly followed by a self inflected head slap.
I thought sure it was straight up Latin. Who says it's a dead language?
