Guess the Language, anyone?

[Nortaneous]

20:01 < Yng> is it from papua new guinea or some shit
20:01 < Yng> or is it african!!!!

the answer to this triple-question is yes, it is from papua new guinea or some shit or african. one of the three.

[Risla]

It's from the first of those (PNG), isn't it?

[Nortaneous]

It's from the first of those (PNG), isn't it?

correct

[Ambrisio]

Is it Papuan?

[linguoboy]

[R.Rusanov]

It's probably Proto-Guinean, or Old-Guinean at the latest.

[Xephyr]

Manambu?

[gach]

It looks like a Ndu language and can very well be Manambu. If that's not the case, I might guess Abelam written using an orthography that doesn't have separate marking for /e o ɨ/.

[Nortaneous]

cev got it

[Salmoneus]

How!?

For the benefit of us idiots at home, could the winners maybe explain what distinguishing features they noticed? At least the Sango one had marginally unusual vowels...

[Nortaneous]

For Enindhilyagwa, it had two vowels, and since there was no <e> it obviously wasn't Arandic. (My first guess was Kaytetye, which I only guessed because I didn't know that's how it was spelled, so I couldn't google it and find out that it's closely related to Arrernte.) It was obviously Australian, and a crash course in Australian linguistics turned up only two languages that have been analyzed as having only two vowels: Enindhilyagwa and Andegerebenha.

Sango was two minutes on Omniglot but I got beaten to it.

I'm guessing Cev went through all his PNG grammars or something; I pulled that sample from the grammar. But given <iy> (and /@/ <i>) and labiovelars, a Sepik-Ramu language was a good guess (would've been even more obvious if I hadn't gotten the orthography wrong -- those <u> should be <uw>), and from there, lack of mid vowels makes it probably a Ndu language, and it has some sort of palatal stop so it couldn't be Iatmül.

[gach]

It's a hard game since here people tend to know all kinds of details from random stuff. It's often also hard to give exact reasons of what features initially guided you towards the right answer since what you are doing when first encountering a new example is running a correlation between it at all the vague language impressions you have acquired in your memory. It might typically boil down to some combination of syllable structure and the phoneme frequencies and such things aren't easy to put into words.

After the first impression, or if someone else's guess gave you enough clues, you can rationalise more about it. For the Manambu passage some distinguishing feature would be that the orthography points towards an analysis of very few vowel distinctions seemingly organised in a vertical system. Such analyses were popular at one point for the Ndu languages. There's also a lexical clue as the passage is filled with di and du. These remind me of the Iatmul word du ("man"), also appearing as the name of the family, as well as the pronouns dɨ ("he") and di ("they").

Rather annoyingly my own copy of the Manambu grammar arrived today in the post, a bit too late to get the extra reading for that particular puzzle.

[Xephyr]

I went to my Papuan grammars folder and went through them until I got to one that made me go "Yeah, that looks pretty close."

Anyway, here's the next one:

ˀÚ·yitiwc̓é·ye pí·wapciˀyawn ha·níya cépmin. Mitá·w̓na hiná·swalawqaqa hími·snim hú·sus ka· ˀiceyé·ye ˀapsí·sna ka· ná·qc ˀattó·laˀysa. Cépmin káˀlo hiwé·ke so·yá·po·. Cépmin konmaná hiná·swalawqaqa káˀlo lilk̓úx yúˀcmene. ˀIwé·pneki hiná·ssiwayna. Káˀla titó·qan ˀiwé·pne ˀewé·ke, cépmin weˀnikí·n so·yá·po·. Tá·mnaqahtq̓inm há·ma ˀewé·ke hími·snim hú·sus.

Edit: Replaced the ˑs with ·s cause they show up better.

[Salmoneus]

Heiltsuk-Oowekyala?

EDIT: nope.

[Ambrisio]

Is it Ldqoiybj?

[Salmoneus]

Salishan?

EDIT: specifically maybe Sahaptin?

[----]

Is it native to California?

[Shrdlu]

Is it an Siuan language?

[Xephyr]

Salishan?

EDIT: specifically maybe Sahaptin?

Sahaptin isn't Salishan, and this language is neither. It is also not native to California. It is not Siouan.

[gach]

Umph, Gitxsan maybe? The excerpt lacks lateral obstruents and labiovelars but it might just be too short to be fully representative.

[Risla]

Is it an Athabaskan language?

[Salmoneus]

Salishan?

EDIT: specifically maybe Sahaptin?

Sahaptin isn't Salishan

Good point well made.
[Was looking through the ones in your 'Penutian and Salish' folder, forgot that some were Penutian]

So is it Penutian?

[dhok]

Some variety of Wakashan?

[Xephyr]

Yes @ Penutian
No @ everything else

[Ambrisio]

Is it Tsimshian?