I put this new Windows 8 advertisement on my own site because, although it's funny, I didn't think it was quite "neat" enough for Neatorama. Then later, I found out something strange about it. No one seems to know what language the actors are speaking!
Native speakers of Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, and Korean declare that it is not any of those languages. The first time I listened to them, the ads sounded as though they contained elements of some Wu topolect, a bit like mangled Shanghainese, but I could also definitely hear bits of Mandarin, albeit with unusual tonal contours and slurring. What was most perplexing of all to me was that, although I was certain that the ads contained Chinese phrases and sentences, every Chinese person to whom I showed them emphatically maintained that they could not understand a single word! In contrast, several non-native speakers of Mandarin said they could pick out a word of Chinese here and there.
Victor Mair of Language Log asked other people who speak different languages if they recognized the language, but still haven't found anyone who understands it. Link -via Metafilter