Name That Language!

[Darren]

Is it Papuan?

[Travis B.]

Is the language an Oceanic language?

[Karch]

It's not from the Americas, it's not Papuan and neither is it Oceanic.

[Darren]

Kolõpohũ no'õ Lakolété ru'aka rai watã rai merĩ nuhãna. Ru'aka watã rai, géhã béro kedi baha rai nuhãna. Kolõpohũ belewaĩ, na'é baha nẽ Lakolété tobo lau béro wahã. Saĩ lau tahi lolõ, ru'aka deka niwã kedi nuhãna. Ra'é lo'o ané lodo, nẽ Lakolété na'ē ikã gã nolo. Na'é weda nolo. Na'é dorē géré béhi ta'o ia béro one'ẽ, Kolõpohũ marĩ pé go'é kia, pé ka'ã keté kewaé go'ē. Kedi Lakolété weda to'u muri. Na'é dorē géré ta'o béro one’ẽ, kedi Kolõpohũ marĩ ‘pé di go'ē, ka'ã keté ana go'ē. Lakolété na'ã merẽ-merẽ.

Is it Austronesian?

[Karch]

It is indeed Austronesian.

[bradrn]

Nias?

[Darren]

Do the tildes represent nasal vowels?

[Karch]

It's not Nias, and yes, the tildes do indeed represent nasal vowels.

[bradrn]

Enggano then? Though I think that unlikely, given that Enggano has full nasal harmony.

[Karch]

It's not Enggano.

[bradrn]

Spoken in the Philippines?

[Karch]

Spoken in the Philippines?

No.

[bradrn]

In that case, I’ll have to give up… I have no clue what this could be. Any other volunteers?

[Darren]

Is it from Indonesia? I also have no clue but I’m willing to guess randomly.

[Pabappa]

maybe Kolõpohũ spells out the name Columbus (perhaps with some nasal suffix), and if Lakolété is also a name, perhaps a French one, we could narrow it down based on geography. Certainly it's not Christopher Columbus if this is a Pacific language, unless you just decided to grab a text about something else. Either way, Im guessing the biggest clue is right at the beginning, where two proper names are stacked together, with no'õ separating them.

Im going to guess this language is spoken in the French area of Polynesia (i.e. not the country, but the area), based on having a proper name beginning with La- and the fact that the name Columbus is fairly widely distributed and need not correspond to the voyages of Christopher Columbus. (In fact, it might be a sign that it's in an English-influenced area since if it were Spanish it would more likely have come from Colón). Vanuatu has tones, right? It might be spoken in Vanuatu.

[Travis B.]

Somehow I read those tildes as macrons...

[Karch]

Yes, it's indeed from Indonesia, and no, Kolõpohũ isn't related to Columbus.

Somehow I read those tildes as macrons...

That's because there actually are some macrons hidden in there.

[Darren]

The macrons and acutes only appear on e, while tildes appear on all the vowels. This implies that there the ē is a nasalised version of é, which would mean that this language has a six vowel system of <i u é e o a>; and cause it’s in Indonesia, this probably means /i u e ə o a/, all with nasal counterparts. Is that correct?

[Karch]

Yes, this is indeed correct.

[bradrn]

Found it, it’s Solor Lamaholot (Kroon 2016). I did it by searching through Blust’s The Austronesian Languages for ‘nasal vowel’; the only Indonesian languages with nasal vowels were Acehnese and Lamaholot, and this clearly wasn’t Acehnese, so I just searched through resources on Lamaholot until I found one with Kolõpohũ, which led me to the original version of the text.

Next text:

Kooya tsipashi onintakotanari kinkitsarentsi. Iroñaaka nonkamantemi okanta pairani. Tzimatsi ikantaitziri irora cuento, kinkitsarentsi Miiri. Tzimatsi ikantzi iraniri manitzi, Masontsori. Yora miiriraja jaitetzi. Tzimatsi chochoki okaratzi inchainaki, ishimiro tyak tyak tyak. Ivajiro ivaro oshiyaro inkiranki, kameetsa ivaro.