Name That Language!

[Pabappa]

Yes, qaayaar̃, Muuniŋʸäp qaall qwaap nʸiänaŋ - Piilʸär̃inʸ, niundulitʸ waarŋ puärt.
Ŋaütʸ quütʸ waarŋinʸ, ŋaütʸ quütʸ qaattitʸinʸ taa-waarŋanʸ Puaġinarap, Taalʸäraq-muur̃uq Piilʸar̃ap.
Qaall qwaap niätʸ nʸiänaŋ Piilʸär̃äp, puaġitʸ Tʸiurddiŋʸ-yäir̃, Maun-yuaŋap, qaatt-paurn niätʸ.
Qaallaqitʸ qwaap, tuaanq pualitʸ, ŋaannʸ wuarar niätʸ yuaġaŋ nʸiänaŋ.
Ŋaalaqq nʸiänitʸinʸ tuaangaqq qaattitʸinʸ, yuagaŋ nʸianiŋʸ muur̃urt-puutt maarnaŋ.
Ŋaannʸ waarderitʸ muur̃urt quumpaarl. Paulabinitʸ muur̃urt quumpaarl, pauläbinʸ Qäip-e-qäill. Ŋaannʸ wuarar nʸiänaŋ Piilʸär̃äp. Ŋaannʸ quurt-waara nʸiänaŋ.

Not a single fricative, apart form the obvious English loan at the beginning .... lots of sonorants including palatalized and nasal ones. /p/ at syllable edge, /b/ between vowels. For some odd reason there's a lot of /q/ and no /k/. Oh and the /ŋ/. Im guessing this is Australian but just in an unusual orthography. The umlaut seems to mostly occur next to palatals so Im guessing the true vowel inventory is just /a i u/.

Despite all of this I cant make a more pointed guess than just saying it's Australian .... I thought maybe I might be able to pin it down just by looking for languages with a voiced retroflex flap, but I couldnt find any.

[bradrn]

Yes, qaayaar̃, Muuniŋʸäp qaall qwaap nʸiänaŋ - Piilʸär̃inʸ, niundulitʸ waarŋ puärt.
Ŋaütʸ quütʸ waarŋinʸ, ŋaütʸ quütʸ qaattitʸinʸ taa-waarŋanʸ Puaġinarap, Taalʸäraq-muur̃uq Piilʸar̃ap.
Qaall qwaap niätʸ nʸiänaŋ Piilʸär̃äp, puaġitʸ Tʸiurddiŋʸ-yäir̃, Maun-yuaŋap, qaatt-paurn niätʸ.
Qaallaqitʸ qwaap, tuaanq pualitʸ, ŋaannʸ wuarar niätʸ yuaġaŋ nʸiänaŋ.
Ŋaalaqq nʸiänitʸinʸ tuaangaqq qaattitʸinʸ, yuagaŋ nʸianiŋʸ muur̃urt-puutt maarnaŋ.
Ŋaannʸ waarderitʸ muur̃urt quumpaarl. Paulabinitʸ muur̃urt quumpaarl, pauläbinʸ Qäip-e-qäill. Ŋaannʸ wuarar nʸiänaŋ Piilʸär̃äp. Ŋaannʸ quurt-waara nʸiänaŋ.

Not a single fricative, apart form the obvious English loan at the beginning .... lots of sonorants including palatalized and nasal ones. /p/ at syllable edge, /b/ between vowels. For some odd reason there's a lot of /q/ and no /k/. Oh and the /ŋ/. Im guessing this is Australian but just in an unusual orthography. The umlaut seems to mostly occur next to palatals so Im guessing the true vowel inventory is just /a i u/.

Despite all of this I cant make a more pointed guess than just saying it's Australian .... I thought maybe I might be able to pin it down just by looking for languages with a voiced retroflex flap, but I couldnt find any.

I did consider Australian, but PHOIBLE reports no Australian languages with /q/… on the other hand, you did say there isn’t any ⟨k⟩ — something I hadn’t noticed — so possibly this is just a strange orthography where ⟨q⟩ is used for /k/.

Assuming it’s Australian, ⟨r̃⟩ is probably a trill, with ⟨r⟩ being a flap — a normal situation for an Australian language. And also if it’s Australian then I assume that ⟨ŋʸ⟩ is /ɲ/ and ⟨lʸ⟩ is /ʎ/ and ⟨rt⟩ is /ʈ/. That helps narrow it down a bit, though there’s still about 20 languages it could be. (Assuming that it’s Australian, of course.)

EDIT: But on closer inspection, this has both ⟨ŋʸ⟩ and ⟨nʸ⟩ — so contrary to what I said, /ɲ/ is probably ⟨nʸ⟩. But in that case I’m not sure now what ⟨ŋʸ⟩ is… it could be /ŋʸ/, of course, but there’s only one Australian language (Yanyuwa) reported to have it, and it seems to have the wrong orthography…

[Karch]

It is indeed an Australian language and it indeed backed its /k/ to [q]. I wouldn't trust PHOIBLE, though.

[Pabappa]

Im gonna guess its somewhere in northern Australia and that the doubled consonants are the fortis consonants of languages like Andilyuagwa. And since Andilyaugwa is one of the few Australian languages I found that has labiovelars, i will also guess that language directly. If not, am I close geographiucally?

I might have better luck with these if I had a better search tool. PHOIBLE is time-consuming to use, and the Pshrimp thing is written as if it can refine results, but since I can't use more than one operator per search it still leads to the same results as PHOIBLE. e.g. if i could search for languages in Australia that have at least 2 fortis consonants ... or would that just make the game too easy?

anyway, even given that PHOIBLE is unrelaible, which i know, it can still be a big help at least in getting me a basic idea of what the phonology is when Wikipedia doesnt have it and other resources are unavailable.

[Karch]

It's neither Enindhilyagwa nor is it spoken in northern Australia.

[bradrn]

I might have better luck with these if I had a better search tool. PHOIBLE is time-consuming to use, and the Pshrimp thing is written as if it can refine results, but since I can't use more than one operator per search it still leads to the same results as PHOIBLE. e.g. if i could search for languages in Australia that have at least 2 fortis consonants ... or would that just make the game too easy?

Pshrimp definitely allows multiple operators — you just have to put them in reverse polish notation. For instance, earlier I was doing a search /ɲ/ /ȵ/ or /ȴ/ /ʎ/ or and /r/ /ɾ/ and and /ʈ/ and, i.e. ‘(either /ɲ/ or /ȵ/) and (either /ȴ/ or /ʎ/) and /r/ and /ɾ/ and /ʈ/’.

[bradrn]

Could it be Wanggamala?

[Karch]

No.

[Karch]

Here's my attempt at transcribing the first 2 sentences of the text in the standardized (non-phonemic English-based) orthography. I had to guess the spelling of some words (couldn't find them in any dictionaries), next to which I put a small question mark. Hopefully this helps you more than the original transcription, which is unorthodox, but accurate.

Yes, kaya, Mooninyap^? karl kwop nyenang^? - Pinjeriny^?, nyoondoolitj^? warng boort^?.
Ngetj kootj^? warnginy, ngetj kootj^? katitjiny dawarngany^? Bwakinarap^?, Tallerack-moorrook(?) Pinjerup.

[bradrn]

Here's my attempt at transcribing the first 2 sentences of the text in the standardized (non-phonemic English-based) orthography. I had to guess the spelling of some words (couldn't find them in any dictionaries), next to which I put a small question mark. Hopefully this helps you more than the original transcription, which is unorthodox, but accurate.

Yes, kaya, Mooninyap^? karl kwop nyenang^? - Pinjeriny^?, nyoondoolitj^? warng boort^?.
Ngetj kootj^? warnginy, ngetj kootj^? katitjiny dawarngany^? Bwakinarap^?, Tallerack-moorrook(?) Pinjerup.

Thanks so much, that will be very useful! But there seem to be a few oddities here, which I’d like to confirm are not typos:

• Both ⟨ŋʸ⟩ and ⟨nʸ⟩ are transcribed the same way (as ⟨ny⟩)
• ⟨lʸ⟩ is transcribed sometimes as ⟨ll⟩ and other times as ⟨nj⟩
• ⟨ä⟩ is transcribed sometimes as ⟨a⟩ and sometimes as ⟨e⟩
• ⟨u⟩ is transcribed as ⟨oo⟩; that seems pretty weird, since most modern Australian orthographies use ⟨u⟩

[Pabappa]

Pshrimp definitely allows multiple operators — you just have to put them in reverse polish notation. For instance, earlier I was doing a search /ɲ/ /ȵ/ or /ȴ/ /ʎ/ or and /r/ /ɾ/ and and /ʈ/ and, i.e. ‘(either /ɲ/ or /ȵ/) and (either /ȴ/ or /ʎ/) and /r/ and /ɾ/ and /ʈ/’.

Okay thank you. I think Ive got the hang of it now. And it says in the instructions "Search terms may be joined by the logical operators and and or. These are postfix." but i didnt see that and probably wouldnt have noticed if i had.

Right now the best match looks like Nyungar, which seems to have /kw/ even if not /kʷ/ as a single phoneme .... am I right? If not, is it within the Nyungic family?

[Karch]

It is indeed Nyungar! The oddities are due to modern Nyungar being a badly-reconstructed mix of various dialects or me spelling some placenames (Tallerack, Pinjerup) in English.

[Pabappa]

Okay. I'm glad I finally got one of these. PHOIBLE actually did help in the sense that its map helped me narrow down where in Australia certain features were common .... if I'd only had Wikipedia I'd have had to click blindly through every Australian family and subfamily. In particular, the /lʸ/ told me it must be in the west because that sound is apparently missing from the east coast, or at least from the languages on the east coast that lined up in other regards. But oddly PHOIBLE seems not to list Nyungar itself, so I ended up finding it through Wikipedia after all.

My sample text is a bit long .... I really wanted to do a song .... both because the lines are short and because it might take a lot of words to precisely distinguish this language from neighboring ones.

Or perhaps not.... I really dont have a good handle on how easy this one will be to find. The orthography is vernacular, not lingustic, so some phonetic information is not marked, but the speakers seem to manage just fine.

Nzala iyi, yakundikile mbigili
Banhu balilile noyi
Bakudayaga
Mu mamisaka
Twapila kukalika, abalimi

Tulina bupina
Tulina bupina

Twalukoyaga kibi no
Twalulila na nzala
Nke wane Monde
Ng’wana wa ng’wana Makeja
Iki lyashila iliyala
Twite shingukulu twifurahishe

Tugule ng’ondi
Tugule ng’ondi

Nulu itiho
Nakujugula ng’wa Mhina
Tulye nguzu jane
Twali twaluhile noyi
Ukudila nzala
Walalila

Witungaga ng’weko munda
Witungaga ng’weko munda

Topila kukalika, abalimi

Tulina bupina
Tulina bupina

Tuyubala ilivita ili ilyang’wa Mayunga

Nose twaheba
Nose twaheba

[bradrn]

Niger-Congo? More specifically, Bantu?

[Pabappa]

Yes, Bantu.

Also to clarify, the language has more than five vowels, but only five are marked in the vernacular script, and literature is always or nearly always written in the vernacular script. i dont think the vowel transcription will make it harder to find this language, though.

[bradrn]

Yes, Bantu.

In that case could it be a Botatwe language? Specifically, Totela?

[Pabappa]

Nope, not Botatwe .... but I think you've got a good handle on how to narrow this down ... this one shouldnt take too long.

[Karch]

Is it Tswana?

[Pabappa]

Ooh, too cool. I'll let you know when you're getting warmer.

(yes, ive been dropping hints in the form of puns .... but theyre not *great* hints, just general clues. e.g. "Narrow" wasnt much help since Narrow Bantu is >90% of Bantu)

[bradrn]

(yes, ive been dropping hints in the form of puns .... but theyre not *great* hints, just general clues. e.g. "Narrow" wasnt much help since Narrow Bantu is >90% of Bantu)

You really don’t need to do this — I’m fine trying to figure it out without hints.

Anyway, is it a Southern Bantu language?