Name That Language!

[bradrn]

Not very many languages have all of /ɴ ʁ ɹ q/ (assuming those are all used with their IPA values). Is it Xumi/Shixing? If not, is it at least Sino-Tibetan?

[Karch]

It's not Sino-Tibetan. The transcription is mostly phonetic, so not all of [ɴ ʁ ɹ q] are phonemic.

[Darren]

Samoyedic?

[Karch]

No.

[Darren]

Is it spoken in North America?

[Karch]

No.

[fusijui]

I seem to be stuck on a high horse here and am not going to name it, but I'll throw out "Altaic" for the gang working on it.

[Karch]

If Altaic was an actual family it'd be a member, yeah.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Is it a Ryukyuan language?

[bradrn]

Tungusic?

EDIT: If so, Nanai/Goldi? I can’t easily find an original source, but Lopatin (1958) quotes Tsintsius as listing a phoneme ⟨ů⟩ for Goldi, and transcribes nasalised vowels with a superscript ⟨ⁿ⟩.

[Karch]

It is indeed Tungusic, but not Nanai.

[fusijui]

Karch, my apologies for being snippy about the transcription. It's an issue that all of us can encounter, picking a sample text from what materials we have access to without necessarily being all that familiar with the language itself and the possibility there's an accepted orthography and/or Latin transcription we're not aware of.

My pique (not really explainable even to myself) is much outweighed by the pleasure of seeing this language here... but also since I know in advance I can't put my hand to a new puzzle text any time soon, I'll wait until tonight to see if someone else can put a name to i.Thank you!

[Nortaneous]

two remaining options afaict

Ulch?

[Karch]

no

[fusijui]

OK, I've been cruisin for a bruisin here, but: Xibo, or Sibe -- the tight relative of "Manchu" spoken by backwoods hicks sent off to the Ili valley region of Central Asia as a garrison during the mid-Qing.

If I'm right, the problem is I've got nothing to offer up as the next puzzle. What then? Back to Karch? Just open it up to the first off the mark with something to share?

If not... man, I suck at what I used to do; and the crows have got to watch out for me and my knife & fork.

PS: Nortaneous, only two remaining options??? What have you been smoking, man? There's so, so many more Tungusic languages~dialects out there!

[bradrn]

OK, I've been cruisin for a bruisin here, but: Xibo, or Sibe -- the tight relative of "Manchu" spoken by backwoods hicks sent off to the Ili valley region of Central Asia as a garrison during the mid-Qing.

Aargh… I dismissed Xibo purely because I’d assumed it wasn’t obscure enough…

If I'm right, the problem is I've got nothing to offer up as the next puzzle. What then? Back to Karch? Just open it up to the first off the mark with something to share?

I have a long list of texts I never got to use when the game trailed off earlier. I’d be happy to post one.

Or you could just look for a text — often I only find a text just before I post it.

If not... man, I suck at what I used to do; and the crows have got to watch out for me and my knife & fork.

Don’t be so hard on yourself! This is, after all, a game which incentivises people to find the most unintelligible transcription of the most obscure languages possible.

[fusijui]

Thanks, bradrn! But Karch hasn't confirmed it, and frankly, I don't trust what's left of my mind to crow yet. Or to eat crow, quite

Sibe/Xibo is tricky because it's a diglossic 'language'; 90%+ of what you find of it is based on the literary variant, which is basically a very mild dialect of 'standard' (literary, classical) Manchu -- even when it comes to recordings or 'transcriptions', it's almost always someone reading something, even if it's in their head. The vernacular is a different beast, and pretty f***ing elusive.

This is, after all, a game which incentivises people to find the most unintelligible transcription of the most obscure languages possible.

Well, I guess that's where I differ a bit with you. I just don't like the use of purposely obscure transcriptions to 'add spice' to the proceedings. [Edit: which I don't think Karch was doing!]

Anyway, up to Karch to say whether we move on to a new one or if I struck out. Thing is, I'm older than y'all, and narrow-minded and all that. I just don't have the range of language stuff at my beck and call you guys do If it came to that, I could post something, but it might be kinda lame.

[bradrn]

Sibe/Xibo is tricky because it's a diglossic 'language'; 90%+ of what you find of it is based on the literary variant, which is basically a very mild dialect of 'standard' (literary, classical) Manchu -- even when it comes to recordings or 'transcriptions', it's almost always someone reading something, even if it's in their head. The vernacular is a different beast, and pretty f***ing elusive.

Now that’s interesting. I would have expected vernacular Xibe to be easier to find.

This is, after all, a game which incentivises people to find the most unintelligible transcription of the most obscure languages possible.

Well, I guess that's where I differ a bit with you. I just don't like the use of purposely obscure transcriptions to 'add spice' to the proceedings. [Edit: which I don't think Karch was doing!]

I certainly agree with you on this. I only said ‘incentivised’… I didn’t say it was a good thing. I certainly don’t try to post obscure transcriptions. (Except for that one time I posted Korean — and even then I wasn’t deliberately looking for it, I found it first and then thought it would make a good challenge.)

Anyway, up to Karch to say whether we move on to a new one or if I struck out. Thing is, I'm older than y'all, and narrow-minded and all that. I just don't have the range of language stuff at my beck and call you guys do If it came to that, I could post something, but it might be kinda lame.

Well, most of my texts have been guessed in a couple of posts… I can’t imagine yours would be worse. (If anything, yours would probably be better, since your area(s) of expertise seem quite different to what most people here are familiar with.)

[Karch]

OK, I've been cruisin for a bruisin here, but: Xibo, or Sibe -- the tight relative of "Manchu" spoken by backwoods hicks sent off to the Ili valley region of Central Asia as a garrison during the mid-Qing.

And you're of course right, it is indeed Sibe, or spoken Sibe to be precise. These sentences were taken from Zikmundová's 2013 grammar, which is rather confusingly written, hence the uncertainty in regards to the transcription. (The worst part of this, however, is what does this say about the state of the linguistics research here in the Czech Republic.)
And as for the new text, do what you want, if you don't feel like posting a new text bradrn has already offered to post one.

[fusijui]

I did a quick look around my hard drive this morning and didn't really find anything good -- the downside of clearing out my 'library' a while back. Bradrn, take it away!

And Karch, thanks for posting this, it gave me a real thrill