How to identify any language at a glance

[iguanamon]

I saw this link, via Twitter, to this article in the magazine "The Week" How to identify any language at a glance. Over the years on the forum, and having visited numerous multilingual websites and having seen multilingual labels and pamphlets, I can recognize quite a few written languages at a glance. This article shows what to focus on in several languages (especially those in Latin scripts). It's an interesting read intended for a general audience.

Thanks to globalization, it's very likely that at some point you've found yourself faced with a line of text written in a language you couldn't quite identify. Maybe in the international section of a grocery store, or on Facebook, for example. "What the heck is this language?" you ask yourself.

To get the answer, often all it takes is a little character. One or two little characters, to be precise. Many languages written using the Latin alphabet have characters or combinations of characters that are unique only to that language. If you spot them, they can give you just the tip-off you need. Here are your lucky flags for some of the languages you're most likely to encounter in print: ...

Ł, ł: If you see this letter (as in Łódź, and standing for a sound like "w"), you are very likely looking at Polish. For further confirmation, look for Ż/ż. (Polish also has many other accented characters, including ź — not the same as ż — but some other languages have these, too).

I, ı; İ, i: Of course, I and i are used everywhere, but in Turkish they're not the same letter. I is capital ı (no dot) and i is small İ (dot), which is why Istanbul is really İstanbul in Turkish. In case you're wondering, ı is said like the vowel in tick but much further back in the mouth. Only Turkic languages have this orthographic distinction, and Turkish is the only one of those you're likely to see. Another good flag for Turkish is ğ, which is silent (as in Erdoğan). ...

[reineke]

This interesting topic has been dumbed down to the point of stupid.

"I've told you about Czech and Polish, which are the easy ones. Other languages that use the Latin alphabet include Croatian and Slovak, and really, you might as well give up and ask. The ones that use the Cyrillic alphabet (like русский) include Serbian Bulgarian, Belarusian, Ukrainian, and of course Russian. Some Central Asian languages do, as well. Remember: Just because it uses the Cyrillic alphabet doesn't mean it's Russian."

Clickable link

http://theweek.com/articles/617776/how-identify-language-glance

[YtownPolyglot]

There are thousands of languages out there. You'd need a big book instead of an article to identify all of them. This is dumbed down; how can we smarten it up?

[iguanamon]

OK, now I'm sorry I posted it. I thought it might be nice for some of the beginners. Sorry.

[reineke]

OK, now I'm sorry I posted it. I thought it might be nice for some of the beginners. Sorry.

Aww, I'm sorry for being a Negative Nancy, and especially since you posted the link but is it such a big deal if *I* don't like something? If we all liked everything everyone else posted, that would be the end of this and every other forum.

There are thousands of languages out there. You'd need a big book instead of an article to identify all of them. This is dumbed down; how can we smarten it up?

The article will not help you recognize thousands, hundreds or tens of languages. A little intellectual curiosity goes a long way. You can learn a lot from food wrappers, restaurant signs, movie credits, books with foreign language citations, last names... Greek and Korean are immediately recognizable, if you have *any* interest in foreign scripts.

His advice on Slavic languages is full of... stupid. Serbian uses both Cyrillic and Latin scripts. Slovak may share the same alphabet with Croatian but anyone can easily learn to distinguish between the two: at first glance it's obvious that Slovak uses a lot of diacritical marks on the vowels. His advice that "Just because it uses the Cyrillic alphabet doesn't mean it's Russian" may be news to some but it does not help you distinguish between these languages.

The article is interesting principally as a glance into a very monolingual world.

[Serpent]

I don't think there's anything to apologize for
There's a fun quiz based on the instructions to a McDonald's Happy Meal game. After each language there's an explanation how to tell it from the related ones or those that use the same alphabet.
He also links to this lj post specifically about the different Slavic languages that use Cyrillic. See the comments too.

I'm pretty sure the quiz was discussed on the old forum but I can't find the thread anymore.

As far as I remember, he mentions this, but if you can't or don't want to do the quiz, one useful tip is to learn a couple of function words, like the article forms (if they exist) and "and". After all, they say you can read the New Testament if you learn the Greek for "and" Obviously pronouns and the verb "to be" also help.

Also, don't think it's on the list, but Galician is basically in between Spanish and Portuguese. It uses both ñ and nh (the latter differently from Portuguese), its definite articles are like in Portuguese, and it has lost the [kw] sound written as cu- in Spanish and qu in Portuguese (cando, catro).

[reineke]

Language recognition chart

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Language_recognition_chart