Guess The Language!!!

[Adarain]

Just so I'm not accused of cheating, here's my process as I try to figure it out.

1. Go to Ethnologue and look at tibeto-burman langs listed there.
2. Ethnologue usefully has a list of languages sorted by language families that includes subbranches and lists what country the language is spoken in here
3. With the information given here, I can therefore ignore everything not in india, as well as the Tani and Kuki-Chin-Naga subbranches. There's of course still a shitton, but I open each language in a new tab.
4. I now go through every tab and check for number of speakers. Or, well, I would, but ethnologue is not happy with me:

Spoiler:

That makes things a bit more annoying.
5. I close all those tabs, Firefox informs me it was 56 of them. I go back to the original list I linked and open a second browser window. Another thing ethnologue lists is ISO 639-3 codes, which one can also search on Wikipedia, so I do just that. 56 times.
6. Wikipedia luckily has articles on every single one of those 56 languages, complete with a number of speakers sourced to Ethnologue. I can narrow it down to five languages with "around 10k speakers": Ranglong (8k), Pattani (11k + 5k L2), Takpa (12.4k, 9.1k of which in India), Zangskari (12k) and Atong (10k). Curiously, a very large amount of languages seem to have 30k or 65k speakers.
7. Assuming one of these five is the language we're looking for, I take a look at the wiki pages first to see if any of them obviously fall away:
-Atong does seem to be written, but mostly by simply writing in Garo or using its conventions. This seems to fit your description of "Not of it's own" quite well
-Zangskari is written with the tibetan script, so I can probably discard it
-Takpa appears to also be written with the tibetan script
-Pattani appears to be unwritten
-I can't find a whole lot on Ranglong but it's speculated to be Kukish, i.e. Kuki-Chin-Naga, so I can probably exclude it for now too

Based on these informations, I think Atong might be the best guess.

[sangi39]

I wouldn't consider that cheating. I'm fairly certain that several times in this thread, process of elimination has been considered generally acceptable. I've gone through similar processes, limiting the range of number of speakers, language family or geographical area based on "yes" or "no" answers, then looking at what languages within that range might fit in terms of phonology. A couple of times we've been able to guess a language based on an orthographic quirk, like a fairly unique use of a particular diacritic.

I think the only thing that's really considered cheating is copying and pasting the text into Google. Although if you claim to have near perfect reference abilities and a large collection of relatively obscure grammatical treatise *cough*Birdlang*cough*, there's a slight chance people might think you're cheating as well.

Using a database of statistics and phoneme inventories to narrow it down on your own seems to be all right And I definitely like the way you posted your method just to be on the safe side

[Adarain]

I know my process wasn't cheating. But I didn't want to do all that research, say "it's probably Atong" and then be accused of cheating.

[Frislander]

I know my process wasn't cheating. But I didn't want to do all that research, say "it's probably Atong" and then be accused of cheating.

Well you got it right, so your turn.

[Adarain]

I've got a text ready on my computer but I've already moved to bed :/ I'll post it tomorrow afternoon when I'm back from work.

[Adarain]

Alright, here we go:

niguorcosam memheunaur henoid mitelu nit gurmaur
mi am [franc] dam ancalaur.

nicanãniguardam nicusam henoid cet iben med nouel
mi amfranc dam anpatel.

namercit mi nep leguenid henoid is discirr micoueidid
dou nam riceus unguetid.

The text was written like this in the source I got it from. I do not know whether it was written in this exact fashion originally.

[protondonor]

Celtic?

If so, Brittonic or Continental?

[Adarain]

Brittonic, indeed.

[protondonor]

Old Welsh.

(I was just reading a book on the Celtic languages a few minutes ago, looked up some of the Old Welsh texts it mentioned, and recognized a word from your text.)

[Adarain]

Well that was quick.

[Nemesis]

Give it a try!

So san sama mu ba tlaxi, san fla:
- Bô sêbê ô? Ola n ga fada bô konsê ti, bô na ka fla fa ê, punda xi n ga fla bô, ti, bô ka sê kwa ku n fla bô.
- Avo, ê na sê fô. Avo, n sa ku suxtu, n fada san kuma n na sêbê fa.
San fla:
- Ti, sa kinte se ku san fada mu pa n na ba floga nê fa, ka manda mu be ê

(...)

[Adarain]

Not your turn.

[protondonor]

Alright, next one:

Aya, fagwalakw wende aka. A ba ujek a damaw a ya. Aaw! Wala anta tuwah deydey. Amba ɗala a nda ara mbe ca a ɓaw heje. A ɓaw heje delele. Ca bay a ŋgaya: « Kay! Ma dekey wala fagwalakw ŋgha vayay? » a ya. A, heje a ŋgaya: « Bay hwa han ata wala ca, sa kula. » a ya.

[Adarain]

Nilo-Saharan?

[opipik]

Chadic? If yes, Biu-Mandara?

[protondonor]

Yes, it's Biu-Mandara.

[opipik]

(I swear I saw a sample of this language, but I can't remember its name.)

[Wario Toad 32]

This is not one of my Conlang even though it looks like it is

Hopefully dialects are allowed

Limburgs (ouch waal: Lèmburgs, Limburgsj of Limburgisj) is d'r populaere naam vör 'n verzameling dialekte die in de dialektologie 't Zuidoosnederfrankisch geneumd werre. Me is ooch d'r term 'Limburgs' gaoë gebruke umdat de mètste gebroekers van dis dialekte in èng van de beide Limburge wonne, mae 't haat och luuj in Wallonië en Duutsjland die dis taal noch kalle. 't Limburgs is dus e diasysteem. 't Limburgs is ing vaan de winnige toeëntale in Europa.

[GrandPiano]

This is not one of my Conlang even though it looks like it is

Hopefully dialects are allowed

Limburgs (ouch waal: Lèmburgs, Limburgsj of Limburgisj) is d'r populaere naam vör 'n verzameling dialekte die in de dialektologie 't Zuidoosnederfrankisch geneumd werre. Me is ooch d'r term 'Limburgs' gaoë gebruke umdat de mètste gebroekers van dis dialekte in èng van de beide Limburge wonne, mae 't haat och luuj in Wallonië en Duutsjland die dis taal noch kalle. 't Limburgs is dus e diasysteem. 't Limburgs is ing vaan de winnige toeëntale in Europa.

I think the generally accepted rule in this thread is that you only post a language if you've just correctly guessed one.

[Frislander]

This is not one of my Conlang even though it looks like it is

Hopefully dialects are allowed

Limburgs (ouch waal: Lèmburgs, Limburgsj of Limburgisj) is d'r populaere naam vör 'n verzameling dialekte die in de dialektologie 't Zuidoosnederfrankisch geneumd werre. Me is ooch d'r term 'Limburgs' gaoë gebruke umdat de mètste gebroekers van dis dialekte in èng van de beide Limburge wonne, mae 't haat och luuj in Wallonië en Duutsjland die dis taal noch kalle. 't Limburgs is dus e diasysteem. 't Limburgs is ing vaan de winnige toeëntale in Europa.

I think the generally accepted rule in this thread is that you only post a language if you've just correctly guessed one.

Yes.