What is WhereSpoken?
WhereSpoken plays a voice recording and asks you to identify two things: the language being spoken and the country the speaker is from. The passage itself contains no intentional clues about either answer. You must rely on accent, phonetic patterns, and rhythm alone. The default difficulty is Normal, which provides hints and ancestry information after wrong guesses.
How to play WhereSpoken
- Play the audio sample on the card. You can replay it and scrub through as needed.
- Type your answer into the guess field. The placeholder prompts for a language name, such as "French" or "Japanese."
- Press Guess. A wrong answer reveals the next hint rather than ending the round.
- Keep both questions in mind: you must name the language and identify the speaker's country. Naming the language family alone will not complete the puzzle.
Why the dual requirement matters
Asking for both language and country is what gives WhereSpoken its edge. Naming the language family gets you partway but no further when that language has multiple national accents. A wrong guess buys you another hint rather than ending the run, so the puzzle remains approachable even when you encounter an unfamiliar language.
Tips for identifying the speaker
Listen for sounds, not words. The board states outright that the passage carries no intentional clue about the language or country. Vowel color, consonant inventory, and intonation are your only evidence.
Answering the language is only half the task. The instruction asks for the speaker's country as well, and a language with several national accents will not be settled by naming it. Use the hints that appear after wrong guesses to narrow the field.
The Normal difficulty setting shows hints and ancestry information as you progress. This structure turns the puzzle into a ladder rather than a cliff, keeping it playable even when you start with little confidence.