Need help indentifying a foreign language.

I remember 7 years ago I met a black person who spoke some weird language. It sounded like English but I could not understand a word of it. At first I thought he was trying to tell me something in English and he was just speaking too fast and wasnt sounding out the words correctly, but after he repeated himself about 15 times I realized that he wasnt speaking English at all.

I wanted to try and figure out what language he was speaking since I never figured out what he said to me.

What I perceived as individual words were extremely fast. Almost extra terrestial.

It sounded like "What are you doing to do" but he didnt say those words but rather 100 words in the timeframe it would take me to say 5. And all the words as he said it sounded like "What are you going to do" while speaking 100 individual words.


I am white btw, is it something to do with biology that I felt like this person was NOT human at all? Since once I figured out what was being spoken was a foreign language, it struck me that this person was beyond alien. There is no way I dont think I could speak that fast.

He looked like a white guy in his facial traits but his skin was black as black you had to stare at him for 10 minutes to just actually see his face and what he looked like. This was in daylight. Very weird looking. Not an average black person. The other black dood he was with looked white compared to this dood.

Anyone any ideas? How many languages are known to exist? What kind of black person was this? And what was he saying?




[edit on 18-3-2005 by Ritual]

[edit on 18-3-2005 by Ritual]

OK figured out it is similiar to isixhosa or siswati/

I think he said a slur to me.

Something like "What are you going to do", "wehtami something something something something something" I cant remember the rest of the words.


At least the language was close he said something like that.


Way weird.




[edit on 18-3-2005 by Ritual]

Huh? More details please. It sounds like you cut off a very dark skinned African in a supermarket checkout line.

if it was xhosa he would have made clicking noises amongst the words so i dont think it would have been that language. pidgin english maybe if you made out any english words in what he said

American. They don't speak english properly. (comming from an aussie).
Being serious now though, it was probably some pacific island language.
Or maybe it was the opposite on entish

Originally posted by Ritual
He looked like a white guy in his facial traits but his skin was black as black
[edit on 18-3-2005 by Ritual]

Maybe he wasn't African descent at all, sounds like southern India to me.
Many of the locals have aryan features with an extremely black skin tone.

Originally posted by Ritual
Anyone any ideas? How many languages are known to exist? What kind of black person was this? And what was he saying?

[edit on 18-3-2005 by Ritual]

[edit on 18-3-2005 by Ritual]

There are 4,000 to 6,000 languages spoken on Earth.
In Africa there are about 900 million people. I don't know the total world population of dark colored people.
I don't think anyone can tell you "What kind of black person was this"
If you don't know what he was saying we will most definably not know what he was saying, let alone translate it.

There are several thousand langauges, including creoles (which may sound English-like and contain English words) and pidgins (ditto.) It might also be a form of slang (like "jive".) There's also a lot of Englishes with Just Plain Weird Accents (I've seen documentaries where they subtitle Scots and other English dialects because the accents sound so strange to our ears.)

I think you need a bit more information than what you've given.

Maybe it was French

If it sounded like English you might also look into Afrikaans, which is only distantly related to English (it's Dutch or German + some mixture of african langauges hybridized, I'm not remembering right offhand). Otherwise, yeah, good look but with so little info it's hard to do much more.

omg have we not forgotten the obvious answer

Was this guy from Jamaica??

It was probably some version of Creole, which is really a mixture of languages, usually English and something else, like Swahili or some other African language.

I dont know he was pitch black. He didnt even look human. He was sitting next to me in an automobile and when he first got in I just thought he was a black kid.

Then I turned and looked at him and I just remember feeling like I was in the Stargate movie.

You know the language "Rah" starts speaking. He started speaking this language it sounded very ancient. I could not beleive my ears I did not think speaking these types of languages were even humanly possible or even existed.


I kept asking him to repeat himself because I thought he was trying to tell me something in english but could not speak it well. After the third or fourth time I realized that the words he was speaking werent English.

Then I got the impression he had a gun. He had a knife too. I never seen them I just knew. I was thinking I was going to cheap shot him and get out of the car to feel safer since I was pinned in, and then my body couldnt muster the strength to take out the guy and he reached for his gun. Then when I figured out how to disable his gun, that is when he pulled the knife almost instinctly. Then I was kind of in stalemate and we both sort of scoped each other out.

I remember thinking "So this is how I am going to die, by some black punk speaking some Ancient language I cant understand or even comrehend as possible". I think because I kept saying "what?.." everytime he spoke. And I think he said in English "stop saying what.". Maybe he was trying to get me to stop telling him to repeat himself.

He carried a weird knife too. Like a claw. He also was VERY proficient with it. He seemed like he belonged in Stargate in more then just his language.

The language was advanced. I remember being in a kind of awe the first time I heard it. I thought that I had seriously met an advanced person.

I tried making out his face. I was literally a foot away from him and I was staring at him for a good 2 minutes to try and figure out what he looked like under that skin.

Weird.

And what is even weirder is that before that my cousin used to hang with this black guy. I dont know what you would call him, he was a light skin black guy.

After I met the black dood who spoke that ancient language, I was at my cousins house and that other guy came up to me and was "You speak African?". I was like no.

Then the chick he was with who was white started speaking the language.

I thought they were part of a secret society. I never heard anything like it, and the language was very powerful, mysterious and advanced.

I think it is African because right after that white chick started speaking this language, another black chick came into the room and asked me if I spoke it. I said no. They called it "african".

It felt like I was in a movie and they were looking for the lost prophet or something. Or they were looking for the "chosen one".

The language was very extra terrestial.

After those days I promised myself I would never leave my house unarmed, because I dont think what people know of the world is the truth. And these people werent 100% friendly and were even mean somewhat. The females were very sexual, the guys were very quiet. The females were the mean one's, but they were also sexual and in between feeling like they didnt like you, they would be up on you sexually after calling you racist remarks.



[edit on 19-3-2005 by Ritual]

Does anyone have any sound clips?

I would definatly know it if I heard it. Im pretty sure its a language from Africa. Or maybe it has roots there.

That white chick knew it, who I just thought was some drug addict but I guess not. So maybe it is Ancient Eqyptian?

What does Ancient Eqyptian sound like, or Eqyptian?

All the languages I have listened to that I could find sound nothing like the language these people were talking.

Oh well just curiosity. I am not capable of speaking it, need enlightenment or new vocal cords .




[edit on 19-3-2005 by Ritual]

Originally posted by Ritual
At first I thought he was trying to tell me something in English and he was just speaking too fast and wasnt sounding out the words correctly,

The reason it sounded like he was speaking fast was because your brain doesnt know where one word ends and the other begins.

Probably a part of it, maybe.

When I say it sounded fast, I mean fast.

Like the words were spoken in a millionth of a second, and those millions of words formed sounds that sounded like words themselves.

You could not comprehend the bigger words that you thought you "heard" because the words did not make sense or could be related to English at all.

It sounded as if the person was reciting a book every sentence. And that to my ear it sounded almost like "pure information" was being spoken instead of words.

But that would not even explain it precisely.

I just thought maybe there was an answer, but it is probably a secret language of some sort.

So how the hell are we soposed to know what language it is when you dont have a recording or in writing anything!!!

Ritual: www.ethnologue.com ... happy hunting

Actually, there isn't an "African" language... there are many hundreds of them. There is an "Afrikaans" which is spoken in South Africa.

Skin color means little in identifying someone's language. I have colleagues with very black skin that speak pure South Texan.

Annnywayyyy, folks, since there really isn't much science here (or any clues) I'm moving this over to BTS.

This thread is simply ridiculous.....It's full of superficial, racist remarks and incoherent thoughts attempting to ask a question that will never yield an answer.....

At least it was moved over to BTS....but I'm beginning to think BTS has simply become the refuse pile for unwanted ATS material......Why this thread wasn't trashed is beyond me....

Just an observation.....Nothing against your judgment Byrd....

On topic.....I don't think it's truly possible to keep any language "secret"....And most foreign languages you hear are going to sound like they're speaking a million miles an hour....Most people who hear native English speakers cannot even begin to comprehend what we are saying b/c it sounds incredibly fast to them....

Don't take my remarks above as an insult....Just put more time into trying to clearly express your thoughts and perhaps you can spend a little less time talking about how black someone's skin was and how you were trying to imagine the person who was underneath his skin.....There's really no need for comments like that here....

I'd suggest taking a course in linguistics when you get the chance, if languages still intrigue you later in life.....

[edit on 3/21/2005 by EnronOutrunHomerun]