# Unknown language: kela pracno ferja degilu



## Schroedingher

Sorry to bother you with a rather silly question:  could the phrase above be in Greek?

Judging from my very limited exposure to classic Greek, it does not even sound Greek, but a friend of mine alleges it is.  

	 	  	 	 Ευχαριστώ!


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## ateaofimdomar

Hi,
this is not Greek, neither modern or ancient (unless there are serious transcription errors). Some words seem to be Faeroese.


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## Schroedingher

Yes, I think "ferja" comes from the same Norse word as English "ferry" (and means the same thing).  But other words ("pracno", "degilu") do not sound Nordic at all.

Could this be some dialect of Greek spoken in some remote Balkan enclave or something like this?


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## ateaofimdomar

To my knowledge, there are no Greek dialects with Nordic elements, because there has been no interaction of Greek and Nordic people strong enough to leave its marks on the language. Even if this were the case, there would be some recognizable Greek elements in your phrase, which there are not.

If you tell us where this phrase comes from, maybe we can be of greater assistance.


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## Schroedingher

No, I do not think it's Nordic, I'm pretty sure it's just a homonym. A quick googling on this word brings up, among other things a few Portuguese companies using this word in their names (might be related to Spanish "feria" - fair, a Sunday marketplace) and some obscure place in Syria.
So whatever language this is, it's not represented broadly on the Internet.  

This phrase popped up on a Russian board where interpreters and amateur linguists gather to shoot the breeze. One of the posters says he received it from a girl he knows and it's supposedly in Greek.  We have major European languages covered fairly well, but our collective Greek expertise turned out to be rather limited  

Thanks again for your help and if I ever find the answer, I'll let you know.


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## Outsider

It's not Portuguese. The word "pracno" looks kind of Slavic to me.


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## Schroedingher

You are correct, "praca" means work, labor in a number of Slavic languages (although this word is absent from modern Russian).  However, the whole sentence does not sound Slavic either ...


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## ewie

_Degilu_ looks vaguely Turkish to me.  Shame the rest of it _doesn't_


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## sokol

Even though I cannot quite match this phrase with entries in my Albanian dictionary I think Albanian also could be a possibility: firstly because there's an Albanian minority in Greece, and also because Albanians were in close contact both with Slavs and Turks - just in case "pracno" and "degilu" indeed were Slavic and Turkish (they also look Slavic and Turkish to me, but that's just a wild guess ).

They could however also be words of an Albanian dialect, probably a very mixed dialect (with ingredients from one or probably several languages present in this region in recent times: Greek, Albanian, Bulgarian and Macedonian, Aromunian = Romance language, even Romanes = Gypsy dialects are a possibility).


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## Kanes

I think it is an anagram, not Albanian. A little search of the words came with this link, notice the adress... http://mv.lycaeum.org/anagrams/PARALINGUA.cgi?article=Lataorenai


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## ewie

Well, if you put that into their 'translator', you get *Jocular, naked pilferage*.
Hmm, yes.


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## OldAvatar

sokol said:


> They could however also be words of an Albanian dialect, probably a very mixed dialect (with ingredients from one or probably several languages present in this region in recent times: Greek, Albanian, Bulgarian and Macedonian, Aromunian = Romance language, even Romanes = Gypsy dialects are a possibility).



It's not even close to Aromanian, but it sounds like a Balcanic Gypsy dialect.


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## Schroedingher

Funny how closely this discussion resembles the one from "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" by Edgar Allan Poe where several witnesses were trying to identify language spoken by a suspect to a heinous murder.  

It seems, though, pretty much everyone, myself included, agrees that "pracno" sounds kind of Slavic and "degilu" has some Turkish feel.  This also made me think of Albanian, but, alas, I was unable to find any of these words in a handful of Albanian texts available on the Net. 

I wonder if this is one of more exotic Turkic languages, like Gagauz, or, indeed, just an anagram or some other kind of encoded message ...


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## jonquiliser

There seems to be a place called Pracno (Pračno) in Croatia, so maybe the language of the phrase doesn't need to be Slavic even if that word may be.


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## Joannes

I doubt whether it's Albanian. Anyway, at some point you're done guessing languages and all you can do is google. 

When I searched for 'pracno + ferja', Google suggests I look for Franco Ferrara , but there is one website that does contain the words (except for the WRF themselves..). It seems to present itself as a Russian-Turkish online dictionary. Now, you only encounter the words if you see the 'cached' pages. Ok, I don't know if this will work but this should be a link to the cached version (dated 15/01/2009). In the column on the left we see both 'kela pracno' (4) and 'kela pracno ferja degi' (7). When you click either of those, you will get another list in the column on the left, and on the right, the phrase will appear with something in Turkish behind it (like a definition, I guess). I can only say 'yes' and 'no' in Turkish so I have no idea whatsoever as to what this could mean, but the fact that the 'explanation' (?) is the same for both the shorter and the larger phrase ("kelimesi ile ilgili sözlükte alakalı bir cümle bulunmamakta"), I'm afraid it might mean something like 'no entry' or something, but in Turkish you would need 8 full words for that .

Now it's up to the people that speak Russian and/or Turkish to solve the mystery. I'm sure this website holds the key.


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## Schroedingher

jonquiliser:

not sure I understand what you mean - Croatian is a Slavic language, so it's quite logical for a place there to be called something Slavic-sounding.  As for the entire phrase, yes, it does not look Slavic to me and it probably isn't.

Joannes:

my mastery of Turkish is pretty similar to yours, as for the Russian part - here goes:

Above column on the left - either "last" or "sent", this word is abbreviated, "requests".

Entry field: "enter a word".
Button below: "find in the dictionary".

Above column on the right: "similar".

So, on the left you see what you (or maybe others as well) entered before.  The message on the right most definitely tells you that there's no such word in the dictionary (try entering something meaningful, for example "eski" - old, former to see the difference).


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## sokol

Tranexp.com thinks that the Turkish phrase means just "word with concerned dictionary jay one each total absence": so what you've guessed already above - it means the word is not in the dictionary.

But the hint of OldAvatar that this might be a Gypsy dialect should be followed up: because there's definitely a Gypsy verb "khelav"*) (and it is a frequent one): it means "play, dance".
*) This is actually _Burgenland Roman_ and in other dialects it might differ _slightly._

As for tense (if it were a Gypsy dialect): "khela" could be future tense (in Roman: first person singular future); preterite would be "khele" - and I think I remember the very same form in Balkan Gypsy songs so I think the verb's also used widely there.

Neither "ferja" nor "degilu" sound very Gypsy-like, nor does "pracno"; but Gypsy dialects picked up a great deal of foreign vocabulary - also (if not especially so) on the Balkans.

But I would be interested what "kind of" a letter "c" we have in "praco": should this be "Slavic c" = /ts/? It can't be Greek "c" as Greek has either zeta or kappa, or chi probably, but no "c".
And "degilu" _still _sounds Turkish, while "ferja" _still _might be anything.


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## yujuju

Well, if you type the sentence in that "anagram-translator" you can also get 
*"jerk up of angelical dear"* although it doesn't really help, but we also don't know its context, just this Russian board.


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## jonquiliser

Schroedingher said:


> jonquiliser:
> 
> not sure I understand what you mean - Croatian is a Slavic language, so it's quite logical for a place there to be called something Slavic-sounding.  As for the entire phrase, yes, it does not look Slavic to me and it probably isn't.



What I meant was only that if the language were in fact, say, Turkish, the presence of a Slavic word might be explained if it refers to a place. (As in the English phrase "I am going to Pracno"). That's all I meant


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## chrysalid

It is certainly not Turkish


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## sokol

Well, as we've now confirmed that this isn't Turkish there aren't many options left: I'd say either a Gypsy dialect (probably mixed with borrowings) or alternatively an anagram are the remaining options, right?

That is, if it isn't any other code, or even a hoax.


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## Schroedingher

sokol said:


> Well, as we've now confirmed that this isn't Turkish there aren't many options left: I'd say either a Gypsy dialect (probably mixed with borrowings) or alternatively an anagram are the remaining options, right?
> 
> That is, if it isn't any other code, or even a hoax.



Upon reading this, I immediately thought of Esperanto.

None of these words could be found in a couple of online dictionaries I checked, but the general eclectic feel of Esperanto and its strange mix of Romance and Slavic roots is quite similar to the phrase we're trying to decipher.

The original poster on our board, who promised to find out more has not come back, so we can keep guessing as much as we like ...


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