Re: Which language is this? (once again)

Tim May wrote:
> Mark J. Reed wrote at 2006-02-04 10:44:15 (-0500)
>  > Well, I found a copy of the flier online; this is the list:
>  >
>  >     * Entdecke das Leben
>  >     * Ondek het Leven
>  >     * Découvrez la vie
>  >     * Odulaez zycie
>  >     * I Bescubre la vida
>  >     * Scopri la vita
>  >     * apni jindgi trike fe banao
>  >
>  > The penultimate one does look like Italian, but the antepenultimate is
>  > not quite Spanish (which would rather be "Descubre la vida").
>  > Perhaps it's Portuguese or Catalan?
Catalan 'discover' is descobrir, acc'g to an online dictionary. Then
Romanian occurred to me, but that's _a descoperi_; well, Papiamento? no,
that's _deskubrí_-- so unless there's a weird *d- > b change in some obscure
Romance dial., by default it has to be simply Misprinted Spanish (no idea
what that "I" is, however).

> Based on what Google's turning up, I'm pretty sure it's Urdu/Hindi.
> "jindgi" is "jindagi" or "zindagi", "life".  The romanisation seems to
> be a little unorthodox, which makes it hard to look up the rest
> online, but if anyone has suitable dictionaries they might like to
> have a go.
**Google has Hindi<->English and Urdu<->English sources; you're right on
"life", but "discover" doesn't match any of the other words in the phrase
(Urdu is _daryaaft karna_e.g.). Some other Indic language? What groups are
common in Germany? Doesn't seem to be Romany. (?)
>

Replies