Anyone know what language this is?

Diana Hignutt · Mar 4, 2009

I was looking through a box of papers recently, and discovered something I had printed out a couple of years ago. It was an entry of something called NWpedia on me (I found it by google). I have no idea what language it is, but there's four pages of it. If anyone has any idea what language it is, I'd appreciate it. Here's a snippet from the beginning:

Diana Hignutt

Dian novelf. Chavelf. Howed Stan Emprope shectioned is againters novers Diana she derfe, thers end ited Dian Emprintegord, is th he torcest his magaing. Yeals the Tradio reter mis not of he Cation ing pe imprical con. Mne diona is ana in Livill poweve fabled antant ho as Tolinces a theres Diant he to acroul clas hing wifect is worde. Yeal pring who the whowervied Ms. Amerits the st na mightion.

.

Could it be Norwegian or Dutch? Any guesses?

IceCreamEmpress · Mar 4, 2009

It isn't a language. NWpedia.org was some kind of now-defunct MediaWiki website that seemed to have lots of entries in some kind of scrambled English. If you go to the Internet Archive, you'll see that you were in the good company of Dan Chaon, Drums Along the Mohawk, and the Division of Nigeria.

Adam · Mar 4, 2009

Aah, I was wondering why it was almost readable

Diana Hignutt · Mar 4, 2009

IceCreamEmpress said:
It isn't a language. NWpedia.org was some kind of now-defunct MediaWiki website that seemed to have lots of entries in some kind of scrambled English. If you go to the Internet Archive, you'll see that you were in the good company of Dan Chaon, Drums Along the Mohawk, and the Division of Nigeria.

Okay, so why would someone post four pages of almost readable gibberish? That makes no sense to me at all. But, thank you, I appreciate your wisdom in this matter. How odd...

Phaeal · Mar 4, 2009

Yeah, I thought it was goofed-up, slightly Anglo-Saxonized English, too. :e2sven:

veinglory · Mar 4, 2009

Garbled English is often a personal code, to keep messages confidential.

Diana Hignutt · Mar 4, 2009

veinglory said:
Garbled English is often a personal code, to keep messages confidential.

Yeah, but it's creepy if it's about you.

Saskatoonistan · Mar 4, 2009

It's me monologuing after about one scotch too many.

Brindle Chase · Mar 4, 2009

and here I thought it was Klingon. *lol*

IceCreamEmpress · Mar 4, 2009

veinglory said:
Garbled English is often a personal code, to keep messages confidential.

My guess is that the people who made that site were taking random Wikipedia and other wiki-site pages and running an encoder on them as part of some larger project, not as an actual repository of information.

Diana Hignutt said:
Yeah, but it's creepy if it's about you.

Ook. I can imagine.

I'll ask my husband (research scientist in computer linguistics) to take a look at it and see if he has any further insight to offer.

benbradley · Mar 4, 2009

Diana Hignutt said:
Okay, so why would someone post four pages of almost readable gibberish? That makes no sense to me at all. But, thank you, I appreciate your wisdom in this matter. How odd...

Diana Hignutt said:
Yeah, but it's creepy if it's about you.

I presume your name has been online for a few years - that page is from January 2007. I'm guessing it's simply random computer-generated gibberish, though it might encode "secret messages" with steganography, though I think it would be really hard to tell just from the data. I noticed archive.org only has the index pages with a lot of names, many of them unusual, so there may not be much other examples of the actual data online. But I'd say your name was collected at random with a huge other amount of stuff from online. So it only seems creepy, it's not actually creepy.

Matera the Mad · Mar 4, 2009

If you ever encounter a real unknown language and need a clue:
http://www.polyglot3000.com/

ETA: Current incarnation of NWpedia -- game site
game : made-up languages : random word generation experiments
Whaddaya think, Watson?

sindy9001 · Mar 4, 2009

I don't understand this, maybe this is not a language.

Diana Hignutt · Mar 5, 2009

benbradley said:
I presume your name has been online for a few years - that page is from January 2007. I'm guessing it's simply random computer-generated gibberish, though it might encode "secret messages" with steganography, though I think it would be really hard to tell just from the data. I noticed archive.org only has the index pages with a lot of names, many of them unusual, so there may not be much other examples of the actual data online. But I'd say your name was collected at random with a huge other amount of stuff from online. So it only seems creepy, it's not actually creepy.

Yeah, I was aware that someone had put up a Wikapedia page about me a few years ago (when I was more famous), but since then it's been edited down to very little, and all the pictures removed.

Still, it's good that this only seems creepy, and isn't actually creepy.

Anyone know what language this is?

Diana Hignutt

Very Tired

IceCreamEmpress

Hapless Virago

Adam

Not dead.

Diana Hignutt

Very Tired

Phaeal

Whatever I did, I didn't do it.

veinglory

volitare nequeo

Diana Hignutt

Very Tired

Saskatoonistan

Still the wrong side of Saskatoon

Brindle Chase

Dancing on the edge

IceCreamEmpress

Hapless Virago

benbradley

It's a doggy dog world

Matera the Mad

Bartender, gimme a Linux Mint

sindy9001

Diana Hignutt

Very Tired