# How Hard Would It Be To Determain Someone's Language? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 19, 2009, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-would-it-be-to-determain-someones-language/510685 "2009-09-19T02:58:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2009, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-would-it-be-to-determain-someones-language/510685/21 "2009-09-19T22:21:20Z")
> [@](#): > > Probably not the best example, because I’m not sure there even _are_ Gaelic speakers that don’t speak English anymore, but hopefully you get the point. There are a few, but it’s deliberate out of ethnic pride, rather than from lack of opportunity. I remember reading of one internationally-active fellow who communicates with other Europeans in Esperanto, because he refuses to speak English. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2009, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-would-it-be-to-determain-someones-language/510685/22 "2009-09-19T22:57:54Z")
Yes, the Japanese eventually figured out that the codetalkers were using the Navajo language as part of the code. When they found out that it was being used, they tortured an American prisoner of war who happened to be Navajo but who knew nothing of the code in order to see if he could tell them what was being said when they played him recordings. They couldn’t have got very much out of him if he had talked, since codetalking wasn’t just speaking Navajo. It was using Navajo words to spell out messages in English with some common words having a one-word code. Hopi wasn’t used in codetalking: > **[Code talker](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_talker)** > > A code talker was a person employed by the military during wartime to use a little-known language as a means of secret communication. The term is most often used for United States service members during the World Wars who used their knowledge of Native American languages as a basis to transmit coded messages. In particular, there were approximately 400 to 500 Native Americans in the United States Marine Corps whose primary job was to transmit secret tactical messages. Code talkers transmitted ... ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2009, 1:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-would-it-be-to-determain-someones-language/510685/23 "2009-09-20T01:06:09Z")
Except that, from, what I’ve heard, the extra layer of code consisted in certain words corresponding to English letters, and just spelling things out, with each letter always being represented by the same word. If that’s true, then the “extra security” offered by the code actually made the whole thing trivially easy to crack, if the Japanese had only realized it. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2009, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-would-it-be-to-determain-someones-language/510685/24 "2009-09-20T02:06:51Z")
That’s true in a sense. If the Japanese had seriously worked at trying to understand the code they would have eventually have broken it. The claims you might read that codetalking was “an unbreakable code” are nonsense. The only thing that kept the Japanese from breaking it were time and a serious effort at codebreaking. It would have been necessary to train some of their soldiers to recognize Navajo words. It would have been necessary to work out the code. That wouldn’t be difficult for a trained codebreaker, but it appears that the Japanese weren’t putting any real effort into codebreaking. Navajo codetalking wasn’t an unbreakable code, just a good enough one for its purposes. ---
**Author:** ![Lama\_Pacos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/d6d6ee/32.png) [@Lama\_Pacos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lama_Pacos)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2009, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-would-it-be-to-determain-someones-language/510685/25 "2009-09-20T02:50:05Z")
Are we talking about identifying it off the cuff, or with access to resources? If the latter, I think success would be quite simple. Obviously there are limited potential phonemes in the world, but phonemic and phonological inventories are still quite idiosyncratic. I think you could definitely narrow it down to at least a broad family just by figuring out what sounds the speaker has and lacks. So basically, what Johanna said. Doing this on a superficial level without references, this would be a lot harder. Someone lacking much knowledge might easily assume from the cadence that some West African languages are related to Chinese or Vietnamese, given that they possess tonality. Hell, I’ve often mistaken _Brazilian Portuguese_ for a Chinese language when I’m not paying attention. ---
**Author:** ![Markxxx](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5daacb/32.png) [@Markxxx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Markxxx)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2009, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-would-it-be-to-determain-someones-language/510685/26 "2009-09-20T18:55:00Z")
> [@Lama\_Pacos](#): > > Are we talking about identifying it off the cuff, or with access to resources? The movie I was watching was from the 40s and it took them a year or so to find out he was speaking Estonian. Of course now it’d be different but it got me to wondering about the difficulties of knowing what language someone is speaking. If I go to Google translator it amazes me how it can detect the language. ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2009, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-would-it-be-to-determain-someones-language/510685/27 "2009-09-20T19:31:21Z")
> [@Markxxx](#): > > If I go to Google translator it amazes me how it can detect the language. That’s still a pretty tiny fraction of the world’s languages, though. The other issue is that if you don’t know a language, it’s pretty darned hard to put it in written form. The unknown person would have to be able to write the language for you before you could type it into Google. There are Native American languages that don’t even have printed dictionaries. Even widely-spoken languages don’t always transliterate into Roman character sets consistently (as you can see when you visit three Chinese restaurants and see the foods spelled differently in each one). Did the world media ever settle on a spelling of Moammar Khaddafy’s name? ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2009, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-would-it-be-to-determain-someones-language/510685/28 "2009-09-20T23:48:52Z")
I would record a sample, post it somewhere and raise the question on TSD. I’ll bet someone on the boards would be able to identify it. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2009, 6:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-would-it-be-to-determain-someones-language/510685/29 "2009-09-21T06:48:02Z")
So what is “TSD”? After some Googling, I concluded that it’s something called “Text, Speech and Dialogue”, but I can’t find a message board for that. What do you mean? ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2009, 7:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-would-it-be-to-determain-someones-language/510685/30 "2009-09-21T07:01:51Z")
> [@Wendell\_Wagner](#): > > So what is “TSD”? After some Googling, I concluded that it’s something called “Text, Speech and Dialogue”, but I can’t find a message board for that. What do you mean? “The Straight Dope,” I’d imagine. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [September 21, 2009, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-would-it-be-to-determain-someones-language/510685/31 "2009-09-21T07:24:38Z")
If Hari Seldon meant the Straight Dope Message Board, he should have used the standard abbreviation SDMB. I’ve never seen anyone use TSD before. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-hard-would-it-be-to-determain-someones-language/510685.md?page=1)