Inkling: The Language of Splatoon

[Joseph Staleknight]

Well that sucks.

I don't think it'll stop us from producing some fanon, though! Gotta show our love for the game!

 

[eli]

"most" :P :P

and to be fair, they didn't technically mention the writing system, only the spoken dialogue ;)

 

[eli]

Given these lyrics, assuming we have all these characters (can't check right now but will tonight :D ) , it'd be INCREDIBLY helpful if someone could transliterate these lyrics into the Latin (English) alphabet. @Joseph Staleknight, @PiyozR, @aggravatedTranscription? Thank you all! Working on the font now. :)

 

[Zephy]

There is no amount of awesome that can explain how far we are coming to decipher Inkling!

I'm mostly trying to learn the speech aspect of it. I heard it is a mixture of languages (which is creative since in the beginning of humanity, people all spoke 1 universal language). Could it have been that the inklings combined all the languages of the world to make a solid encrypted language only to be understood by Squid beings? I think that is likely so!

When the Inklings say "Deploy" after setting up something to shoot (Like a Killer Wail), they say something that sounds ODDLY similar to "Deploy" which is spoken as "Depoi!". And when squids land to their allies in battle, they exclaim "Buon dembi!" which roughly sounds like "I'm Ready!". And in conclusion, the word Dembi, which is often said my the males, directly translates to "Ready!".

Stay Fresh is spoken as "Sae Fwuaah"! sounds like the spanish Sea Freska or Se Freska. While other words like "Squii weeboiwee..." which sounds like "Oh Really?!" a phrase of impatience and stress. Sounds like a corruption of the english words "OH REALLY?".

These are only a few examples, but I am still trying to decipher what seems like a load of gibberish XD

I play this game too much help.

 

[eli]

ngyes

 

[PiyozR]

Given these lyrics, assuming we have all these characters (can't check right now but will tonight :D ) , it'd be INCREDIBLY helpful if someone could transliterate these lyrics into the Latin (English) alphabet. @Joseph Staleknight, @PiyozR, @aggravatedTranscription? Thank you all! Working on the font now. :)

I'll hand-write it today, not because it's useful (it's all gibberish anyway) but just to give myself a better grasp for Inkling text. Let us know when the font is ready!

Could it have been that the inklings combined all the languages of the world to make a solid encrypted language only to be understood by Squid beings? I think that is likely so!

When the Inklings say "Deploy" after setting up something to shoot (Like a Killer Wail), they say something that sounds ODDLY similar to "Deploy" which is spoken as "Depoi!". And when squids land to their allies in battle, they exclaim "Buon dembi!" which roughly sounds like "I'm Ready!". And in conclusion, the word Dembi, which is often said my the males, directly translates to "Ready!".

Stay Fresh is spoken as "Sae Fwuaah"! sounds like the spanish Sea Freska or Se Freska. While other words like "Squii weeboiwee..." which sounds like "Oh Really?!" a phrase of impatience and stress. Sounds like a corruption of the english words "OH REALLY?".

I imagined that Inkling is Japanese and English combined into one and given thousands of year to incubate. That's just my approach to it.

We're pretty certain at this point that everything that the Inkling say is pure gibberish that won't be/can't be used in establishing this language. Don't take my word for it. Nintendo just told us so in that email shown above.

 

[Nickfire47]

There is no amount of awesome that can explain how far we are coming to decipher Inkling!

I'm mostly trying to learn the speech aspect of it. I heard it is a mixture of languages (which is creative since in the beginning of humanity, people all spoke 1 universal language). Could it have been that the inklings combined all the languages of the world to make a solid encrypted language only to be understood by Squid beings? I think that is likely so!

When the Inklings say "Deploy" after setting up something to shoot (Like a Killer Wail), they say something that sounds ODDLY similar to "Deploy" which is spoken as "Depoi!". And when squids land to their allies in battle, they exclaim "Buon dembi!" which roughly sounds like "I'm Ready!". And in conclusion, the word Dembi, which is often said my the males, directly translates to "Ready!".

Stay Fresh is spoken as "Sae Fwuaah"! sounds like the spanish Sea Freska or Se Freska. While other words like "Squii weeboiwee..." which sounds like "Oh Really?!" a phrase of impatience and stress. Sounds like a corruption of the english words "OH REALLY?".

These are only a few examples, but I am still trying to decipher what seems like a load of gibberish XD

I play this game too much help.

Im soory to say that Nintendo confirmed it to be gibberish in an email I sent them sorry

 

[Nickfire47]

I'll hand-write it today, not because it's useful (it's all gibberish anyway) but just to give myself a better grasp for Inkling text. Let us know when the font is ready!



I imagined that Inkling is Japanese and English combined into one and given thousands of year to incubate. That's just my approach to it.

We're pretty certain at this point that everything that the Inkling say is pure gibberish that won't be/can't be used in establishing this language. Don't take my word for it. Nintendo just told us so in that email shown above.

Sadly I feel like this is going to lead to the text being gibberish, too, I'm awaiting a reply from Nintendo, so at this point we are making our own language that we will sound like were mental to everyone else, if the text is gibberish, I'm out sadly

 

[Zephy]

Aww that's quite the turnoff. And here I thought I was getting somewhere lol. Oi...

 

[eli]

I'll hand-write it today . . . (it's all gibberish anyway)

Thank you! I'll get all the letters looking all neat and then when you post this, I can decide what goes where. :)

 

[PiyozR]

Upon looking at those lyrics, I found a few letters that I never saw before. I decided to add some more letters to our Inkling alphabet. They are attached. Anyone forming some fonts should take note of these.

Here are the song lyrics of the Squid Sisters provided by that video written out in IPA. Maybe I should write it out here, too just to be clear.
Paifoo-ee, paifoo-ee. Ayoodoopah.
paifoo-ee, paifoo-ee. Ayah na-ee-ay.
Rayo haga ay. Nay dee ooyo pa bo-ee pa-ee oyoo ay. Nay di.
paifoo-ee, paifu-ee. ayoodeeyay ayo gee aya gee aya.
rayo ha, rayo ha. ga-ee nay. rayo ha. ah-yay ra shu hu na-ee.
fee so bo-ee faganay gahaypa-ee. nagee ooyo fa ee.
ayah fay, na-ay ha ayoogee ba-ee ayee ay. Nay ooyay ah yay eeyay ha ba-ee pee
hu pee nay ga pa

 

[Joseph Staleknight]

Ooh, nice!

Okay, I've updated the vectors for the syllabary, but I've noticed some errors:

• The way I see it, glyph 119 (/ho/) has an identical shape to glyph 41 (/ʤe/). We should flip 119 over so that the top bar becomes the bottom.
• 81 and 125 have the same pronunciation /ɹe/. Can 125 be /ɹo/ instead? I think we have a vacancy there.
  
• Finally, 126 has the pronunciation /ɹei/, which is unusual since it's the only glyph that ends in /ei/. Maybe it should be /ɹie/ instead?

 

[PiyozR]

Ooh, nice!

Okay, I've updated the vectors for the syllabary, but I've noticed some errors:

• The way I see it, glyph 119 (/ho/) has an identical shape to glyph 41 (/ʤe/). We should flip 119 over so that the top bar becomes the bottom.
• 81 and 125 have the same pronunciation /ɹe/. Can 125 be /ɹo/ instead? I think we have a vacancy there.
  
• Finally, 126 has the pronunciation /ɹei/, which is unusual since it's the only glyph that ends in /ei/. Maybe it should be /ɹie/ instead?

I spent twenty minutes looking over those letters and still missed those huge oversights.
-I meant for 119 to be a left/right flip of 40. But to avoid confusion with 116 let's just flip 119 so that the top bar is at the bottom and the squiggle goes from left to right. Just a up/down flip.
-Again, a totally stupid mistake on my part. 125 being /ɹo/ sounds good to me.
-And yes I meant /ɹie/. I just wrote it backwards.

Now that's going to be our official unofficial Inkling alphabet. Let's just grant that any other letters that you see will be variations of these that are pronounced the same way. This week I'm going to get some basic words going based on that list of parts of speech seen above. Expect infrequent updates with those at random hours.

 

[Marijntjep]

I was researching this language a bit by watching videos, I'll get the game on friday and I'll look into every single poster / text / dialogue

 

[eli]

@PiyozR, @Joseph Staleknight, nice! I've been using the song as some sort of base, working through it line by line.

The song written out was helpful, but what about with each character represented with one English letter? Sorry if I didn't explain clearly before. Where I'm at now, I added some more characters and changed weights of a few others and such to match the glyphs in the Squid Sisters song/video – I have all the characters for at least the first two lines, so far (didn't have much time to spend on it today, sorry!)

Currently, as you can probably see, the Inkling characters (apart from those comprising words like 'cat', 'dog', and a couple other words we "know") are assigned random English letters (e.g. FNJ FNJ STG / FNJ FNJKQ-) – what should I be using for them instead? Something to hopefully somewhat match the IPA transcription from your image?

 

[PiyozR]

Currently, as you can probably see, the Inkling characters (apart from those comprising words like 'cat', 'dog', and a couple other words we "know") are assigned random English letters (e.g. FNJ FNJ STG / FNJ FNJKQ-) – what should I be using for them instead? Something to hopefully somewhat match the IPA transcription from your image?

That's a good question. We have over 125 letters now. How can we assign each one to a keystroke on a standard keyboard? Here's an idea: Is it possible to assign an inkling character to two or three keystrokes? Could you use the two or three IPA letters representing the pronunciation as the keys that put that character on screen? And then just assign the non-English IPA letters (ʤ et al) to other keys like "L" and "X" or "Q"? Does that work?

 

[Poltersquid]

That's a good question. We have over 125 letters now. How can we assign each one to a keystroke on a standard keyboard? Here's an idea: Is it possible to assign an inkling character to two or three keystrokes? Could you use the two or three IPA letters representing the pronunciation as the keys that put that character on screen? And then just assign the non-English IPA letters (ʤ et al) to other keys like "L" and "X" or "Q"? Does that work?

this may not be the most opportune way to do this, but you could assign some letters to letters with accents, however that would require the use of the US-international format (which most people don't use/ know how to switch to in their computer settings), and the set up would be fairly arbitrary.

 

[doop]

once you decipher it what is next

 

[Nickfire47]

once you decipher it what is next

There not technically deciphering it, there inventing a language based on it

 

[MissingNumbers]

There not technically deciphering it, there inventing a language based on it

No harm in that, really. If anything, this is really fascinating. I'm especially looking forward to that font, @eli! Partially (by which I mean mostly) because I'm planning to use it for stuff, but hey, details.