Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2022 August 12

= August 12 =

Does anyone recognize this language?
I found it on Wikisource as an 'unknown language'

"Ramn ku ǵlapn" ("The sheep and the goat")
 * Ramn se biǵtu.
 * Ǵap muguln imẃ sats.
 * U baǵa um, ǵlapn imẃ utu.
 * Ǵlapn beǵe um ǵa glu u.
 * Ku mumẃ um o geǵe ut hal ku uǵ.

Limburgish translation here. — kwami (talk) 08:07, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Wakuran (et al.); English translation:

't Sjaop waar wèrkendje. De meulestein mós verzatj waere. Óm det tö doon mós de geit mithèlpe. De geit dij det mid väöl spasj. Èn daerachter laefdjentj 'ie nag lank èn glökkig.

The sheep was working. The millstone must be moved. In order to do that, the goat must assist. The goat did that with much joy. And thereafter lived they yet long and happily [happily ever after].


 * I am wondering whether the diacritics are actual diacritics of the language or stress marks for scansion purposes. If those are actual diacritics, ẃ is not present in many languages (I tried Welsh but that’s not it).
 * Google Translate thinks it’s some Austronesian language (but of course offers nothing useful). There are at least two words ("ramn", "muguln") that kinda look Germanic. Possibly, it could be a Dutch creole from the Dutch East Indies period, but of course that’s speculation; I could not find anything that seems to match (being neither a Dutch nor a Malay speaker does not help). Tigraan Click here for my talk page ("private" contact) 09:51, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Glapn looks vaguely Romance (capra ~ crapa 'goat'), assuming the -n on ǵlap-n, ram-n, mugul-n is a noun suffix (and that also looks Germanic). If the diacritics were for scansion, I'd expect them on more than just 'g' and 'w'. Possibly this is an experimental orthography for an unwritten lect, or an ad hoc transliteration. It looks to me too much like a real language to be a hoax. 'ku' for 'and' is odd, though. It and 'work' look vaguely Irish, as if it were a pseudo-Celtic conlang. — kwami (talk) 10:35, 12 August 2022 (UTC)


 * Ram looks like English ram or lamb, ku like Latin -que, ǵlap could be a mangling of capr(a), se could be the reflexive pronoun, final -n could be a Scandinavian common gendered article. I wouldn't be surprised if someone had attempted to make a vaguely Indo-European conlang. (I wonder if ǵ is meant to be pronounced as English j.) Even if I have studied both German and Dutch, Limburgish doesn't feel too straightforward. But I could attempt a rough translation into English people could feel free to improve. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 18:05, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks! My attempt at translation left too many question marks, though I do wonder about 'soften'.
 * Sats looks like 'ver-zatj', glu like 'glee', and ut like 'out'. That strikes me as more than coincidence.
 * Possible a~e ablaut? baǵa 'to do', past beǵe 'did', also past se [BE + -tu gerund], geǵe 'laughed'. u 'with'? — kwami (talk) 20:05, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Google translate gives Dutch verzitten = shift, so perhaps the millstone needs to be moved, not softened. TSventon (talk) 20:40, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Possibly I can assist with the Limburgish: verzatj is moved (verzitte), laefdjentj is lived (laeve), nag is German noch (nag), the last sentence is the typical last sentence of fairy tales. The text looks like reconstructed proto-language. Wiktionary has only one language where ku means and: Papiamento. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 20:47, 12 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Yeah, I have my doubts about it being a real language, but figure it's worth an attempt to ID it so we can classify it properly on WS. — kwami (talk) 02:12, 13 August 2022 (UTC)


 * I can't say whether it's a natural language, but it looks very germanic to me. ẃ must be a vowel, g and ǵ may be two versions of g, one palatalised and the other not, or one a plosive and the other a fricative, or something like that. Some guesswork:
 * Ramn (=the sheep, compare ram) se (possibly a reflexive pronoun or auxiliary verb) biǵtu (=working, or so the Limburgish translation says):
 * The ram was working.
 * Ǵap (there was, compare German es gab) muguln (=millstone, mu sounds like German Mühle or Dutch molen) imẃ (=to him, personal pronoun in dative case referring to the ram, compare German ihm) sats (=to move/relocate/reseat, some gerundive, compare seat):
 * There was a millstone for him to be reseated.
 * U (=to, some preposition, compare German um) baǵa (=do, compare Dutch begaan) um (=that, some demonstrative), ǵlapn (=goat) imẃ (=to him, as above) utu (=to be of use, compare French utile; could be a loan):
 * To do that, the goat had to be of use to him (=assist him).
 * Ǵlapn (=the goat) beǵe (=did, ablauted from baǵa) um (=that, as above) ǵa (=with pleasure, compare Dutch gaarne) glu u (I've got no idea):
 * The goat was happy to do so.
 * Ku (=and, may be related to nordic og) mumẃ (=after, some preposition) um (=that, as above) o (=yet, compare German noch) geǵe (=lived, past tense of gaǵa; the Limburgish translation appears to be singular, but I'm not sure about that) ut (=both; I think "ut ... ku ..." can be translated as "both ... and ...") hal (=long, or happy; maybe related to Dutch or German heil) ku (=and, as above) uǵ (=happy, or long):
 * And after that, he (maybe they) lived yet long and happy (=And they lived happily ever after, the standard ending of fairytales).
 * PiusImpavidus (talk) 10:49, 13 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, that all makes a lot of sense. 'Work' looks vaguely Celtic, but I suppose it could be anything. The nominal -n looks Nordic, but the rest doesn't. And with the inflections it doesn't look like a creole. If it were a reconstruction, I'd think it would be more recognizable. So maybe some basically Germanic alt-world conlang? Not sure what it's doing on Limburgish Wikisource. — kwami (talk) 19:53, 13 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Certain aspects, such as that the language appears to have articles but no genders, and the gerund construction in "waar wèrkendje" ("was working") makes me believe that it might have been a conlang originally published on some English language mailing list or something, with the English later translated into Limburgish and put up on Wikisource. (Or does the "waar wèrkendje" syntax really feel natural in Limburgish?) A proper word list would have helped in alayzing the syntax, by the way. There's a lot of guesswork here on many levels. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:17, 14 August 2022 (UTC)
 * You mean that the -n suffixes are the articles? They are all the same, but it could be coincidence that the words for sheep, goat and millstone all have the same grammatical gender. No evidence for grammatical cases either. I don't speak Limburgish, but the construction "was aan het werk" (was working, using a gerund) is fairly common in Dutch as some sort of continuous aspect, with "was werkend" (using a present participle) a possible, although uncommon, alternative. PiusImpavidus (talk) 18:55, 14 August 2022 (UTC)
 * If I remember correctly, there are only a few languages on WS-li: Limburgish, High Limburgish, Old English, and this (under "unknown"). The two Old English entries duplicate WP-ang, which has been closed. So it's certainly possible that someone was trying to preserve this from being deleted somewhere. — kwami (talk) 00:52, 17 August 2022 (UTC)
 * The Limburgish text capitalizes the word 'Sjaop', hence it might be a proper name for a mill, like Het Jonge Schaap, Zaandam. Then the singular in the last sentence makes sense, for then there is only one animal in the story. Perhaps Ooswesthoesbes (you talked to him already) might have a better understanding of the Limburgish text. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 14:35, 17 August 2022 (UTC)
 * At first I thought it was a German-like thing, but apparently the other nouns aren't capitalized. Then, I guess it could also be an orthographical custom since the text starts with an 't (neuter gender article, I presume). 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 16:18, 17 August 2022 (UTC)
 * But you're right in that 'ie looks more like "he" than "they". From what I can find out, the "standard" form for "he" is 'hae' and "they" is 'ze', although it might depend on the dialect. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 22:48, 17 August 2022 (UTC)
 * It does look like it might just be an orthographic convention, that you don't capitalize words like 't and 'ne at the beginning of a sentence, but instead capitalize the first full word. There are other Limburgish texts at WS like that, such as 't Zit in de loóch, where several lines start that way. — kwami (talk) 00:12, 19 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I thought that the form "laefdjentj" could give a hint whether 'singular he' or 'plural they' was meant, but if I understand the Limburgish Wiktionary right, the distinction isn't quite as strict - or shows more variation - as in Standard German. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 10:39, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

What's the word in Turkish?
In this video you can see a man draw one's attention with a word meaning 'brother' that sound like havya. What's this word? 2A00:A040:199:76A8:BDDA:5276:D44C:DF3B (talk) 10:54, 12 August 2022 (UTC)


 * I don't have access to the video link as I'm at work, but could it be a declension of abi ? BbBrock (talk) 11:48, 12 August 2022 (UTC)


 * If you mean at 10:47 (couldn't you have given us a time indication rather than let us watch this boring video for most of its duration?), he simply says abi. --Lambiam 06:29, 16 August 2022 (UTC)