Name the language
Here is a short text in a mystery language sent in by Shair Ahmed. Do you know or can you guess which language it is?
Tíobáhai hi báaiso kohoaihíaisóogabagaí. Tí ‘ísi báaiso ‘ogabagai, gíiai ‘ogihíaihiaba. Tíobáhai hi ‘ísi báaiso ‘oaboihaí. ‘Ahoakohoaihio ‘ísi kaopápihaí.
Clue: the name of this language looks a bit fishy.
15 Responses to “Name the language”
Tolkien_Freak on 20 Oct 2007 at 3:38 pm #
I knew I saw this somewhere, it was a part of Vreleksá’s ‘What Language Is This’ thread.
It’s Piraha.
Aeetlrcreejl on 20 Oct 2007 at 4:53 pm #
I should have told you all not to post here.
Anonymous on 20 Oct 2007 at 5:48 pm #
This language is clearly Arabic, as the person who submitted it has an Arabic name.
dmh on 20 Oct 2007 at 6:43 pm #
My guess is the “language” that comes up when you have your character encodings set up incorrectly and the browser doesn’t recognize the real language. Of course, that’s just what it looks like to me ;)
ٍAbdul-Rahman on 20 Oct 2007 at 7:01 pm #
I can tell you one thing: this is definitely not Arabic.
Marco A. Cruz on 20 Oct 2007 at 11:35 pm #
It seem to me a polynesian language: it looks agglutinant, among other details…
d.m.falk on 21 Oct 2007 at 7:45 am #
My first thought was Chinook.
d.m.f.
pittmirg on 21 Oct 2007 at 2:59 pm #
It is Pirahã (piranha ;D), spoken in Brazil. The language has one of the smallest phoneme inventories in the world.
Daydreamer on 21 Oct 2007 at 3:07 pm #
Funny that noone seems to believe Tolkien_Freak, but doesn’t mention another language the name of which reminds of the name of a fish (as Piraha, spoken in Central Brazil, and Piranha does).
And the first word “tíobahái” simply means “child”. Believe or not.
Simon on 21 Oct 2007 at 6:32 pm #
It is indeed Pirahã, a language spoken by about 150 people along the Maici river, a tributary of the Amazon in Brazil.
TJ on 22 Oct 2007 at 5:15 am #
to tell the truth, the text with all these accent marks on vowels, looks like Irish for the first instance!!
Stuart on 22 Oct 2007 at 12:24 pm #
Simon
I notice you haven’t got this particular language on the main Omniglot page - will you be adding it?
Simon on 22 Oct 2007 at 1:56 pm #
Stuart - I do plan to add a page about Pirahã to Omniglot soon.
BG on 23 Oct 2007 at 5:16 am #
I also thought it looked a bit like Irish. Pirahã has the least number of phonemes if [k] and the tones aren’t counted. Otherwise it is Rotokas, if long vowels aren’t counted. See Wikipedia for more info. (Just a random note)
Simon on 25 Nov 2007 at 1:32 pm #
There’s now a page about Pirahã on Omniglot.