What language?

The other day I mentioned Google’s problems in identifying languages. Today I found this on my screen:

Foam oia shev zhe rohewó kych, osb ce afír sút ych efee uesc aima. Sicela ce raa he asa lóra iméch seem heri zú, aenih ovea uazk enoia ká juota mescat ysár. Gum osgia sésh iao foso dja bea ehaa tha rer. óch aja boach noimoc bed met, tehic asr. Osrav supun ró wue oath nybá jepán naajú shaf moar. Ucuer asaj toc jíkasc uene izipsas oön, tak uaztó toam? Méczea úmou scá cá ost, jíkasc feou oöw kon aiv uzóz ych asa zasc aesh rig ecz.

What’s that then? Google offered to translate it from Czech, Slovak and Danish before giving up. If it is European it is clearly an odd thing. I can be sure that it is not Basque, Turkish, Hungarian or Finnish, and if it isn’t Finnish it won’t be Estonian for they are closely related. I toyed with the idea of Maltese, Lithuanian or Estonian but was far from convinced. Then I spotted mv in the URL. I wondered about Moldovan but, as I thought, the Moldovan language is identical to Romanian.

A Google search found a list of internet country identifiers and it turns out that mv is the Maldives. Thus it is probably Dhivehi, which Wikipedia tells us is:

an Indo-Aryan language closely related to the Sinhalese language of Sri Lanka. Dhivehi represents the southernmost Indo-Aryan language. Together with Sinhala, Dhivehi represents a special subgroup within the Modern Indo-Aryan languages which is called Insular Indo-Aryan.

The Indo-Aryan languages are in fact a part of the Indo-European family (Wikipedia):

SIL International in a 2005 estimate counted a total of 209 varieties, the largest in terms of native speakers being Hindustani (Hindi and Urdu, about 540 million), Bengali (about 260 million), Punjabi (about 100 million), Marathi (about 90 million), Gujarati (about 45 million), Nepali (about 40 million), Oriya (about 30 million), Sindhi (about 20 million), Sinhala (about 16 million), Saraiki (about 14 million) and Assamese (about 14 million) with a total number of native speakers of more than 900 million. They form a subgroup of the Indo-Iranian languages, which consists of two other language groups: the Iranian and Nuristani.

Comments

[Ronnie]

Have you tried "reading" the stuff on your screen? It goes on and on with some curiously interesting illustrations. What is it all about?

[Peter Harvey]

I have absolutely no idea at all, I'm afraid, but there are pages and pages of it.

[Ronnie]

Peter

Try http://lycaeum.org/mv/anagram or just lycaeum.org and look around

[Peter Harvey]

Ronnie,

Thank you indeed for your research. The Lycaeum site is devoted to 'entheogenic drugs', which seems to be another name for mind-altering drugs. It claims to be "a virtual meeting place for members of the online entheogenic community."

Well, what about the language, of which there are pages and pages? I suppose it is all made up. The site does offer a translation service on some pages for short phrases (about four or five words). For example,

"Braclu trot iosoa denar iosoa" means:

"Saboteur or social adoration."

or

"To debonair, salacious orator."

I find real languages quite interesting enough. I do suppose, though that an analysis of this language mighi prove something or other about the people who write it.

[Ronnie]

Peter

I imagine that the anagrammatisation, if you will allow the word, is done by computer and is susceptible to translation by reversing the procedure. Back to Bletchley?

Ronnie

[Peter Harvey]

Yes indeed. I suppose that the encrypting is done by a computer program of the kind that might have stumped even the boffins of Bletchley.