Challenge - can you understand this IAL text?

[Qwynegold]

I've kept working with my conlang Omni-kan and have finally translated three texts into it. All the words have been borrowed from natlangs and I want to test how much you can understand without much/any prior knowledge of the language. (Allthough I'm not expecting very good results.) So if you want to participate please read one or more of the texts below, and then tell me:

1. Which text/texts you read
2. Which languages you know
3. How well you understood the text

To answer the last question, you can either write in free form or use the following reference:

0 = I understood absolutely nothing
1 = I understood only a few words here and there
2 = I understood many words, but couldn't figure out any of the grammar
3 = I understood entire (or almost entire) phrases here and there
4 = I understood many phrases
5 = I mostly understood the whole text
6 = I understood everything

Text 1 is maybe the easiest because of its short sentences, and text 2 maybe the hardest because of its long and complicated sentences. Well, it's hard to say. I think texts 2 and 3 contain more recognizable words than text 1.

A hint: <c> = /tʃ~ts/, <g> = /ŋ/.

Text 1

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Nag tumesakal, okal korepiye lo tegkelam co supere te siti
Mi wahit lo nante nante co... wel pe nama esnat pe
Mi pan ti ilta ni es lokus, es alam te mi
Aa, mi tamana wan pisa poste mici puru saha
Wa wan pisa tama iksakte mici ni on lokus, mikal tela is ni on

Seikal tukiya, kasekal puru
El sei is on mici, el sei is on mici
Kalpekal amare, onkal corena amare
El sei is on mici, el sei is on mici

No wakte mi melai on tin
Tu eprat sakkal te tu wa pan etyacati siti
On wakte mi tapat i pe, mi ti walaka fakat
El sei is on mici, el sei is on mici, el sei is on mici

Ohun te terewaca ti tom tom, wa nag katamkal, onkal nante co ekso
Ohun te tu i eko ni cog te mi: Mi aptata tu fahima
On wakte mi ti ilta ni on lokus, on is tarin alam
Seikal el wa is ni on lokus, onkal is fakat mikal
Ni omnis tarin lokus, ni omnis tarin wakte

Seikal tukiya, kasekal puru
El sei is on mici, el sei is on mici
Kalpekal amare, onkal corena amare
El sei is on mici, el sei is on mici

No wakte mi melai on tin
Tu eprat sakkal te tu wa pan etyacati siti
On wakte mi tapat i pe, mi ti walaka fakat
El sei is on mici, el sei is on mici, el sei is on mici

O, mi on wakte ta iksakte
Tu tela ti i co mi wa mi tela ti i co tu
No wakte mi melai on tin
Tu eprat sakkal te tu wa pan etyacati siti

Seikal tukiya, kasekal puru
El sei is on mici, el sei is on mici
Kalpekal amare, onkal corena amare
El sei is on mici, el sei is on mici

No wakte mi melai on tin
Tu eprat sakkal te tu wa pan etyacati siti
On wakte mi tapat i pe, mi ti walaka fakat
El sei is on mici, el sei is on mici, el sei is on mici

El sei is on mici, el sei is on mici, el sei is on mici

Text 2

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Fulani hopit el ni tiyesek ni kato te samin. No cipisisa, piskos, mikrokila tiyesek kon polus wereme wa mikrohaiwan, wa kon pareya sokol sei; tun no kuruk, ti ayema lo, ramle lo tiyesek no kon seikal, wan pisa coko ni on ko kana on. On is hopit tiyesek wa on lit co on is hukeli.

On tostan ti pan nuru ahetare lo anaip mici mantala lo terewaca, pot kamare fenetre lo, kon heren lo huwagse cigke tog lo somu pak ni iksakte mici cog. Terewaca lit co kuwan sekle lo koritore, tunel lo, ikos hukeli tunel no kon tut, kon panelkal ni tiworekal wa ti poug kon koli lo pata lantai, kon heren lo ti pan i laini lo kuresikal wa polus kokikal co maksat te wan tulon topikal wa lampe cakakal. (Sapap is hopit calata ket wisit-renkal.) Tunel ture pan takapa co cog te tapa, no omnis tag ama yakin mici co Tapa-san — omninama ni yakin lokus wele on on mici — wa polus mikros terewacakal lit co on, wahitinci lo ni wahit kere wa postewakte ni tarin wan. Hopit no hiya nante nante ni ekyetankal. Rafa kamarekal, mos kamarekal, kogkankal te katasamin kamare, pocen kamarekal (mekas seta polus sei te onkal), eyu kapinetkal (o tostan omnis kamarekal co eyukal), nowa kamare, kana kamarekal — omnis is ni sama lantai, tun sama koritore. Omnis eg nala kamarekal is ni sai, ni situs te onkal ti pota ot cogpute sei — fakat onkal tostan fenetrekal, i kapira le lo fenetrekal, onkal pan puru lo co yereyen wa huwa forokal ni poste te yen, ni tarepe co neti.

Text 3

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Nihogistan tostan wahit te eg arokya lo kana atet ni alam. On ti iresyati, sapap is on tostan seta kipa wa tun sapap is mekaselekan eprowatute sei. Ni wakte te Puta tarema ti i esnat ot Cogistan, ni 500 yuk, Nihog-ren-ren corena karene co eg pak mici eplanta pasis lo kana atet. Fakat poste te 1868, poste te 200 tahun te yerei lo ware sei, Nihogistan pute terewacakal co eksalam, wa karene cem mici ti i esnat co omnifesemule nama nama.

Eg mekas pak te samin te Nihogistan is yama lo wa wan i osmok samin sei is tifisil, on lit co eg mukyamaina mici natura lo upayoki lai lo pasiskal ti tuikate ta. Es cogtostan raiskal wa sepsikal ot yamakal, wa peisikal wa mare eplantakal ot mekamare. Tami is komen mici pocen te Nihogistan. Omnis tin on ti i kurepan ni satin altare wa ti upayoki ni Puta tarema lo maitag rasemkal. Nihog-kan lo patan te tami is gohan, on tun tostan aretan te pocen wakte. Tami is eg mukyamaina pak sat te sake, tami wino. On tun is omnifesemule patan te alkohol wa is rasem lo isik ni Sinto lo kiyei rasemkal. Es yuk, tami ti solkal ni eg haskal omnis tin, ama tela omniyalam lo kana atet is.

[Qwynegold]

Oh, and you can discuss things with each other if you want. But please use the [morə] tags when you refer to words in Omni-kan, in case there's someone who wants to make guesses without any spoilers.

[xxx]

ial are always looking for the magic recognition,
that allows to understand a language never learned...
fortunately, here I don't understand anything,
it sounds good, like a foreign language...

[Emily]

i read all three texts and understood nothing except the word

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Nihogistan—and even that i wouldn't have pieced together if you hadn't given us the pronunciation of ‹g›

i speak english, some german, and have some familiarity with (but a very limited command of) spanish

[zompist]

Well, I like puzzles sometimes. I can't make out any of the texts, but I can guess at a fair number of words.

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Fulani - French 'someone'?
piskos - fish?
mikro - micro or small
mikrohaiwan - mini-bay? (Greek + Chinese)
wan - one?
fenetre - window
koritore - corridor?
tunel - tunnel
topikal - topical?
cogpute - computer
lokus - place?

Nihogistan - Japan-land
Nihog-ren-ren - Japanese people
poste - after?
yama - mountain?
natura - nature
Nihog-kan - Japanese language (Chinese kan?)
wino - wine
alkohol - alcohol

FWIW I feel like apparent cognates are hard to trust because they could be so many things. Like, kana in the last passage, in a discussion of Japan, could be "kana"... but maybe it's "can", or "language", or Swahili "deny". I'm guessing that you aren't going for immediate recognition, which is fine. But if so, I wonder why you borrow words like "computer" instead of deriving them.

This reminds me a lot of Jeffrey Henning's various IALs.

[hwhatting]

I guessed basically nothing, except:

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Text 2 looks like it's the beginning of the "Hobbit"; hopit is the giveaway, and then things I expected come along, like the repetition of "hole". Continuing to guess would have felt like cheating because I know the text.

I speak German, Russian, English fluently, know Dutch, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Bahasa Indonesia / Melayu to varying degrees, can generally guess well at the content of texts in Portuguese and various Slavic languages, and have some rudiments of Ancient Greek, Turkish, Kazakh, and MSA.
Like zomp said, some words look familiar, but quite often it's not clear to me whether they're actually the word with meaning X from language Y that is my first guess, or a word from some other language that I don't know.

[Imralu]

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mikrohaiwan - mini-bay?

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I was thinking microbe. Micro-animal ... from Arabic for animal.

[WeepingElf]

Familiar-sounding words may be deceptive. For instance, there is a Finnish surname Aaltonen which sounds just like German Aaltonnen 'eel kegs', but of course has nothing to do with either eels or kegs. Rather, it appears to be Aalto, which is also a Finnish surname, with the suffix -nen found in various Finnish surnames.

[alice]

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Text 2 looks like it's the beginning of the "Hobbit"; hopit is the giveaway, and then things I expected come along, like the repetition of "hole". Continuing to guess would have felt like cheating because I know the text.

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It almost certainly is; well spotted.

[Ares Land]

Hm, I recognize a few words. Mostly the last text,

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I recognized Nihogistan almost immediately, so I could make out a few words in that text. The other two I can't understand.

omnis looks like it should be 'all', alam could be 'world'.

Now that we know what the second text is, I'll try and decipher this

[WeepingElf]

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In the second text, tiyesek apparently means 'cave, hole', and I guess that wereme means 'worms', and hukeli means 'comfort, coziness' (cf. Danish hygge 'cozy').

Text 1 clearly is a song, with verses, bridge and chorus.

[Torco]

initally, solid zero
after a bit, in text 3 i feel as if i can guess a few things, maybe up to a 1 or 2... are we talking about

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alcoholic drinks and rice in japan? gohan and sake suggests so.

nihogistan is japan?
wino is wine?
is is is ?
tami is word?
patan is rice?
nono, tami has to be rice, thus "sake, tami wino"
alkohol is probably alcohol, but hell, maybe not? we're talking about sake and stuff no?
yuk *could* be years?
the form "nihog-ren-ren" suggests to me that reduplication is probably indicating plural, and that ren means people? so 'the japanese' or something?
te is some particle, maybe a preposition or something?
omnis sounds suspiciously latin
ot.... could mean from?
Tami is komen mici pocen te Nihogistan... suspiciously like 'rice is come something something to japan".

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is text 1 the padre nuestro que estas en el cielo thing?
does pan mean bread?
does mi mean I or we or sth?

spanish, french, english, scattered bits of knowledge of various smaller romance languages like portu italian catalan etcetera, and i once studied mandarin but i never got anywhere with it. this was fun! i may come back to it

[Qwynegold]

ial are always looking for the magic recognition,
that allows to understand a language never learned...
fortunately, here I don't understand anything,
it sounds good, like a foreign language...

Lol, allright.

i read all three texts and understood nothing except the word

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Nihogistan—and even that i wouldn't have pieced together if you hadn't given us the pronunciation of ‹g› ✓

i speak english, some german, and have some familiarity with (but a very limited command of) spanish

OK, thanks for answering.

[Qwynegold]

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Fulani - French 'someone'? ± No, but it's the Swahili word for "some".
piskos - fish? ✗
mikro - micro or small ✓ Small
mikrohaiwan - mini-bay? (Greek + Chinese) ✗
wan - one? ✓ Specifially the indefinite pronoun
fenetre - window ✓
koritore - corridor? ✓
tunel - tunnel ✓
topikal - topical? ✗
cogpute - computer ✗
lokus - place? ✓

Nihogistan - Japan-land ✓
Nihog-ren-ren - Japanese people ✓
poste - after? ✓
yama - mountain? ✓
natura - nature ✓
Nihog-kan - Japanese language (Chinese kan?) ✓ It is Japanese language (though I don't understand the comment "Chinese kan")
wino - wine ✓
alkohol - alcohol ✓

Some corrections are provided above.

FWIW I feel like apparent cognates are hard to trust because they could be so many things. Like, kana in the last passage, in a discussion of Japan, could be "kana"... but maybe it's "can", or "language", or Swahili "deny". I'm guessing that you aren't going for immediate recognition, which is fine. But if so, I wonder why you borrow words like "computer" instead of deriving them.

This reminds me a lot of Jeffrey Henning's various IALs.

Ah, I see your point about not knowing if one has guessed right or not.

I don't know of Jeffrey Henning. But it seems like his stuff is scattered all over the internet now that I googled a little...

[Qwynegold]

I guessed basically nothing, except:

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Text 2 looks like it's the beginning of the "Hobbit"; hopit is the giveaway, and then things I expected come along, like the repetition of "hole". Continuing to guess would have felt like cheating because I know the text.

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That's correct. I was wondering if anyone was going to realize it, and use it to their advantage.

I speak German, Russian, English fluently, know Dutch, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Bahasa Indonesia / Melayu to varying degrees, can generally guess well at the content of texts in Portuguese and various Slavic languages, and have some rudiments of Ancient Greek, Turkish, Kazakh, and MSA.
Like zomp said, some words look familiar, but quite often it's not clear to me whether they're actually the word with meaning X from language Y that is my first guess, or a word from some other language that I don't know.

Whoah, that's like most of the languages I have used as vocabulary sources. I'm currently compiling data to see how many per cent of these words each language makes up.

[Qwynegold]

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mikrohaiwan - mini-bay?

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I was thinking microbe. Micro-animal ... from Arabic for animal.

So close. It's actually

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bug.

[Qwynegold]

Familiar-sounding words may be deceptive. For instance, there is a Finnish surname Aaltonen which sounds just like German Aaltonnen 'eel kegs', but of course has nothing to do with either eels or kegs. Rather, it appears to be Aalto, which is also a Finnish surname, with the suffix -nen found in various Finnish surnames.

Lol. Actually aalto is a wave.

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In the second text, tiyesek apparently means 'cave, hole', and I guess that wereme means 'worms', and hukeli means 'comfort, coziness' (cf. Danish hygge 'cozy').

Text 1 clearly is a song, with verses, bridge and chorus.

All correct!

[Qwynegold]

Hm, I recognize a few words. Mostly the last text,

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I recognized Nihogistan almost immediately, so I could make out a few words in that text. The other two I can't understand.

omnis looks like it should be 'all', alam could be 'world'.

Now that we know what the second text is, I'll try and decipher this

All correct. Okay, I look forward to seeing what you can come up with.

[Qwynegold]

initally, solid zero
after a bit, in text 3 i feel as if i can guess a few things, maybe up to a 1 or 2... are we talking about

More: show

alcoholic drinks and rice in japan? gohan and sake suggests so. Yes, but gohan and sake are not actual words in this language; they were present already in the original English language text.

nihogistan is japan? ✓
wino is wine? ✓
is is is ? ✓
tami is word? ✗
patan is rice? ✗ No, it's the other way around. >_<
nono, tami has to be rice, thus "sake, tami wino" ✓
alkohol is probably alcohol, but hell, maybe not? we're talking about sake and stuff no? ✓
yuk *could* be years? ± Era, actually
the form "nihog-ren-ren" suggests to me that reduplication is probably indicating plural, and that ren means people? so 'the japanese' or something? ✓ Actually, the reduplication is marking a collective
te is some particle, maybe a preposition or something? Some kind of particle
omnis sounds suspiciously latin Yes it does
ot.... could mean from? ✓
Tami is komen mici pocen te Nihogistan... suspiciously like 'rice is come something something to japan". ±

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is text 1 the padre nuestro que estas en el cielo thing? ✗ ¿Qué? It's actually a Swedish song, thatI don't expect anyone to know
does pan mean bread? ✗
does mi mean I or we or sth? ✓

spanish, french, english, scattered bits of knowledge of various smaller romance languages like portu italian catalan etcetera, and i once studied mandarin but i never got anywhere with it. this was fun! i may come back to it

See hidden comments.

[Qwynegold]

Thanks for playing everyone. Any additional tries are still welcome.

I've come to the conclusion that I need to be even more careful when choosing which language to borrow a given word from, and avoid those options that would result in quite an unrecognizable word.