A linguistics professor, Lada, and Vanessa, who speaks 7 languages, are participating in a language guessing game. They listen to various people speaking in different languages and try to guess which language is being spoken. The speakers include people from various countries such as Mexico, Somalia, South Africa (speaking Afrikaans), Hawaii, Jamaica (speaking Patois), Indonesia, Ethiopia, Congo, and Hungary. Lada and Vanessa try to identify the languages based on their sounds, grammatical structures, and cultural associations. They also engage in humorous banter and personal conversations with the speakers. In the end, Vanessa correctly identifies 3 out of the languages spoken.
Here are the key facts extracted from the text:
1. Lada is a professor of anthropology and linguistic anthropology.
2. She speaks seven languages: Ukrainian, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, and German.
3. There are almost 7,000 languages in the world.
4. Afrikaans is a language spoken by the white population in South Africa.
5. Afrikaans is not the most widely spoken language in South Africa.
6. Hawaiian is a language that was made illegal for a time, resulting in a generation that missed learning it.
7. A language revival brought back the use of Hawaiian.
8. Jamaican Patois is not considered a full language, but rather a dialect.
9. Bahasa Indonesia is the language spoken in Indonesia.
10. The speaker of Bahasa Indonesia was not able to introduce themselves in their language to help Lada guess the language.
11. Hungarian is a language spoken in Hungary.
12. The speaker of Hungarian was able to count to 10 in their language.
13. Scottish Gaelic is a Celtic language spoken in Scotland.
14. Lada was able to guess some of the languages spoken, but not all of them.
15. Vanessa was able to guess 3 out of the languages spoken correctly.
16. Lada's favorite language is Hawaiian, which makes her miss her home.