Name That Language!

[Zju]

Let's see... does the language have evidentiality? Are all of its phonemes present in the sample?

[Creyeditor]

Does the language use any reduplication?

[bradrn]

And since we're on the next page already, here's the sample again:

As it happens, your post was one post before the end of the page. Let me copy it to the new page for you:

Ngebuje ibukaypacap ibararak osodop taperadup pe ibibodo. Oibuꞌun ip jebibododon. Wararaꞌacat muyꞌun am ip oibuꞌun. Jebukaypacaptup oꞌtupmuꞌawero ip tupmupik am soatup. Oꞌtupmupik ip soat etabutpe. Teibong cincan osodop tuptei.

And here’s my question: does it have /ɨ/?

[Moose-tache]

Is it one of the more widely-spoken languages in its language family (i.e. top two or three) (for isolates I guess this question is automatically yes)?

[cedh]

And since we're on the next page already, here's the sample again:

As it happens, your post was one post before the end of the page.

That's weird... Maybe there are user-specific settings somewhere about the number of posts that are displayed on one page? But thanks for copying the text again.

And here’s my question: does it have /ɨ/?

It does have a central vowel, which is variously analysed as /ɨ/ or /ə/ in different sources. So let's say Yes.

Are all of its phonemes present in the sample?

No (but all vowel qualities are present, and only two consonants are missing)

Let's see... does the language have evidentiality?

Yes (but not a very elaborate system)

Does the language use any reduplication?

Yes.

Is it one of the more widely-spoken languages in its language family (i.e. top two or three) (for isolates I guess this question is automatically yes)?

Yes.

[bradrn]

And since we're on the next page already, here's the sample again:

As it happens, your post was one post before the end of the page.

That's weird... Maybe there are user-specific settings somewhere about the number of posts that are displayed on one page? But thanks for copying the text again.

Huh, that is weird… as far as I’m aware, it’s controlled by the global phpBB administration page.

And here’s my question: does it have /ɨ/?

It does have a central vowel, which is variously analysed as /ɨ/ or /ə/ in different sources. So let's say Yes.

Are all of its phonemes present in the sample?

No (but all vowel qualities are present, and only two consonants are missing)

And the answers to these questions are weird as well: I count only five vowels in that text. Is one vowel orthographically represented by a digraph?

Anyway, let me use up my first guess… Wariʼ?

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EDIT: Actually, I just double-checked, and it turns out that Wari' has a completely different vowel system and orthography to the challenge text, so now I’m convinced that my guess was incorrect. For now, I’ll leave it here to avoid confusion, but that does give us a problem: should one be allowed to retract one’s guesses after they have made? This wasn’t an issue in the old game, but now we only get a limited number of guesses, making it a bigger problem. Personally, I think we should be allowed to retract language and family guesses as long as they haven’t received an answer, with this being as if the guess was never made: the asker gets another guess and can ask it as soon as they want, but also don’t receive any response to it, and don’t get any credit for their original guess (even if it was correct all along).

[Zju]

Does it have any of /h/ or /ŋ/? Does it have prenasalised stops? How about nasal vowels and creaky vowels?
Are there affixes for marking possession? Do transitive and intransitive verbs conjugate differently?

[Richard W]

Does the language use any reduplication?

Yes.

Does English use any reduplication? (Just calibrating!)

[Richard W]

Vazega, mbilegana zerabilegara tevukwagha
kwanna dabatlegan kebaramagha;
ghaya dadadaga ma xuda teghala:
Batlambatleg kebarama Dadamazhigilla,
geramnagirega kedulaxana.

As Bradrn gave up 7 days ago, I'll reveal that googling for 'Dadamazhigilla' reveals the language to be Glavda, and the passage to be the quoted speech in Mark i 2-3.

[bradrn]

Does the language use any reduplication?

Yes.

Does English use any reduplication? (Just calibrating!)

According to WALS, no it doesn’t use reduplication productively. This is an extremely distinctive feature of it and other European languages… except that one of the only other areas where this occurs is South America, which contains a good number of non-reduplicative languages.

Vazega, mbilegana zerabilegara tevukwagha
kwanna dabatlegan kebaramagha;
ghaya dadadaga ma xuda teghala:
Batlambatleg kebarama Dadamazhigilla,
geramnagirega kedulaxana.

As Bradrn gave up 7 days ago, I'll reveal that googling for 'Dadamazhigilla' reveals the language to be Glavda, and the passage to be the quoted speech in Mark i 2-3.

Yep, I also googled it some time after I gave up, and also came to the same answer.

[cedh]

Is one vowel orthographically represented by a digraph?

No.

Anyway, let me use up my first guess… Wariʼ?

No.

Yes.

Does English use any reduplication? (Just calibrating!)

According to WALS, no it doesn’t use reduplication productively. This is an extremely distinctive feature of it and other European languages… except that one of the only other areas where this occurs is South America, which contains a good number of non-reduplicative languages.

This language uses reduplication a good deal more than English does.

Does it have any of /h/ or /ŋ/?

Yes. (Both of them.)

Does it have prenasalised stops?

No.

How about nasal vowels and creaky vowels? Are there affixes for marking possession? Do transitive and intransitive verbs conjugate differently?

Yes to all of these.

[Zju]

Ticuna

(doesn't look like it at all, but still the closest I could find)

[Moose-tache]

How about nasal vowels...?

Yes to all of these.

Are you kidding me? The lack of nasal vowels is what's had me scratching my head all last night! Who designed this orthography, a blind wizard?
Anyway, a six-vowel system with nasalization is basically all of non-Andean South America, so it's well and truly back to the drawing board for me...

[cedh]

How about nasal vowels...?

Yes to all of these.

Are you kidding me? The lack of nasal vowels is what's had me scratching my head all last night! Who designed this orthography, a blind wizard?

This is more or less the usual orthography, which does in fact underspecify vowel suprasegmentals to some extent. This passage simply doesn't seem to contain any nasal vowels that are not also followed by a nasal consonant.

Ticuna

(doesn't look like it at all, but still the closest I could find)

No.

[Zju]

Does the passage contain creaky vowels? Are creaky vowels marked with an apostrophe?
Does the language contrast all of the following rhymes:
V[-nasal]
V[+nasal]
V[-nasal]N
V[+nasal]N
Does it contrast just these rhymes:
V[-nasal]
V[+nasal]
VN

[bradrn]

It’s been 24 hours since my last guess, so let me ask another one: is it a Tupian language?

[cedh]

Does the passage contain creaky vowels?

Probably, but I don't know, because they're not marked in the orthography.

Are creaky vowels marked with an apostrophe?

No.

Does the language contrast all of the following rhymes:
V[-nasal]
V[+nasal]
V[-nasal]N
V[+nasal]N

Yes.

It’s been 24 hours since my last guess, so let me ask another one: is it a Tupian language?

Yes.

[Zju]

Dunno. Mundurukú? Searching for information on obscure languages can be quite frustrating. Need to compile a collection of references or something.

[cedh]

Mundurukú?

Yes, that's it! Congratulations!

Mundurukú is one of the more widely spoken languages in the Tupian family, with about 7500 native speakers (probably around 4th or 5th place actually, but the margin downward is much greater than the margin upward, so I answered that specific question with "yes") but not as well-known as one might expect; some of its relatives with far less speakers actually have better documentation in English. I was lucky in that there is one linguist at the local university here who has done some work on documenting Mundurukú, and about a year ago he gave a class about it, so I got access to a few unpublished manuscripts.

Resolving a couple of the puzzles that came up: The only detail in the transcription that I changed compared to the source (a bible translation) was the representation of /ŋ/. This phoneme is typically written g̃, which is so rare that I opted for the more common ng. The central vowel /ɨ/ is represented by u. There is no phonemic /u/; phonetic [ u ] is an allophone of /o/ (according to the first-hand research I got access to, that is; Wikipedia gives a slightly different vowel inventory).

[bradrn]

Well done Zju for figuring it out! Now that this round is over, some thoughts on the new rules:

• Overall, I like them! Having multiple guesses in particular is a great improvement.
• However, the one thing I didn’t like quite as much was the time limit between guesses. To me at least, that restriction feels… I dunno, a bit artificial? As an anecdote, I figured out that cedh’s language was Tupian quite a while before I posted that guess; I don’t think it would have done any harm to post it immediately after I figured it out, instead of having to wait several hours until the time limit expired. Not that this rule was actually bad as such, I just think I personally might enjoy the game more if it wasn’t there (though I can’t speak for anyone else).
• Relatedly, I’m not sure it would do any harm to allow >1 family guess, though this isn’t a point I feel particularly strongly about.
• Additionally, a more abstract philosophical point (which I probably should have raised earlier): in general, I’m not sure it helps to have lots and lots of complicated rules — or even lots of simple ones — for a game like this. The more extraneous things we have to keep track of as we play, the less fun the game gets. (Also, it would be awful for the game to devolve into, ‘well, that was a good guess, but I’m afraid we must disqualify it for being posted two hours too early’… as a somewhat rules-lawyery type myself, I feel that the less opportunities we have to do this, the better.)

Searching for information on obscure languages can be quite frustrating. Need to compile a collection of references or something.

If you haven’t seen it already, I find that the Grammar Pile is good for this.