unforum

[Sirichj]

Has anyonew tried the IPA or International Phonetic Alphabet?

It says this is the notational standard for all spoken languages. Did a lot of reading about the origin of languages and it's hard to tell how they started as there are so many theories, many of the countries on the card and their languages are not linked, some are so I'm finding it hard to see how their languages are linked when they do not derive from the same root unless it's something like hieroglyphics which I assume has already been tried.

Japanese seems to originate from the Ainu people, English is a Germanic language of the Indo-European family, Portuguese is a romance language originating from Galicia, etc etc. I think we should concentrate on the lesser known countries such as New Caledonia and French Guyana as maybe they will reveal something more helpful but this seems very hard for a black card unless the answer is very easy.

According to the Bible, language originated from God's conversation with Adam as God spoke to him, so maybe the answer is as simple as EVE, the mother of creation??

Sorry this might not be much help, just thinking of different ideas!

[Sirichj]

By the way there seems to be a lot of links back to Egypt in the reading I have been doing, I also found this which I thought was exceptionally interesting and maybe provides a new light on our thinking :

[Reid_Malenfant]

[Lilian]

now thats confusing
oh btw tried

[Rifflesby]

tried

[Reid_Malenfant]

im locked out for 17 more hours so if someone wants to try the larousse angle:

[chimera245]

On an alternate note, I tried

[Lilian]

can confirm that

[opsis]

A few more that are not the solution: -

[NirdGerl]

Personally I am very much against the anagram idea, for most ofthe reasons other people have stated.

I think that cards without questions require elegant answers, an answer which when examined makes sense as the only possible answer in light of the facts.

As such I think that this map with which we are presented is probably an actual map which depicts SOMETHING. Not countries which the names happen to make an anagram, but rather a countries with something in common, a set of countries which are the ONLY set of countries which could be used to illustrate the answer.

I mean if it wasan anagram then there'd be lots of ways of doing it. You could drop USA and add Uruguay.

As such I think if we were to take a map of the world and colour the countries according to some kind of factor, these countries would all be the same colour.

Examining further, the usage of the word native suggests to me that the answer will be something you will only find in these countries. Perhaps a native species, or a natural resource.

Also the background looks to me like either the plunge pool of a waterfall or the shore of a sea or lake. Not all the countries have coastlines and or waterfalls and there are some pretty important lakes and waterfalls not shown on thism ap so that's not the answer, but I'd guess that water is somehow important.

All of that said, I don't have a clue what the answer is. One friend of mine said that the map was a Peter's Projection map, which is a very unusual projection to see in this day and age, which may be important.

I thought perhaps that maybe all the countries listed had a town with the name Peter in it (like St. Petersburg and Peterborough) but the answer is neither Projection nor Peter.

Just hurling my thoughts into the pot.

-Stacy

[anansi]

Unfortunately, the only thing I can think of when someone says "mother tongue" is phrases such as "what time do you call this?" and "you haven't called home in ages"

[doublecross]

NirdGerl, I agree that it is unlikely to be an anagram without any clues as to how to order the letters. However, it could be the initials of the countries, or some feature of them, in a particular order that we need to find. Then, it wouldn't be so vague, and the odd ambiguity such as UK/GB/Britain would be resolvable.

I like the idea of finding a feature that only the 29 countries share, but I would be quite surprised if it existed.

[the_fountain]

[Rand0m]

[cthrag yaska]

Following an earlier idea: