Inkling: The Language of Splatoon

[Zephy]

It would be cool if we could, but it seems like Inkling as Nintendo has created it is entirely nonsense. Fortunately, it won't be for long.

Attached are my best guesses of the Inkling alphabet, all 115 characters and 50 variations. Anyone who likes can take a look and see if I missed any. You wouldn't even believe how long it took me to search around every corner of Splatoon, collect these mid-game, and assemble them by shape and similarities. Days of my life.

I am so using this in future artwork. This is BRILLIANT.

 

[Dimfish]

hey guys, coming in from a different web forum where we were discussing the same topic matter, and so far we've attempted to translate the characters as best as we can off the squid jump minigame and the repeated characters in the plaza, heres where we're at so far:

hope you all find a use for this sad attempt at a translation, happy hunting!

 

[Bizz]

Hello everyone! I'm a huge language nerd and was originally going to figure out this whole language myself
(As I have done before on other various languages) until I found this amazing thread! Instead I find it
in my best interest to team up with you guys and interpret and figure out every single little detail and resolve
any confliction or problem there may be with the material that we are given.

I truly believe that this language can be speakable even if it was never meant to be!

 

[Marco]

fgweafawefewaf

 

[RadioactiveMoth]

Thanks for writing down all the characters, PiyozR! I'm gonna go see if I can find any plausible sounds I can assign to them.

 

[spiffy]

@Dimfish so it's definitely based more around english than japanese right? or is it a mixture?

 

[Zephy]

It is most likely a corrupted japanese.

 

[PiyozR]

hope you all find a use for this sad attempt at a translation, happy hunting!

If you look at the different types of letters throughout Splatoon, you'll find that some are shown around the Inklings and Inkling history (the square-ish ones), and some are shown around Octarian and Octarian history (taller and skinnier ones). For the purposes of this thread, we're treating them like two different languages. I'm going to keep your post in my browser as tonight I will start assigning phones to each Inkling character. Thanks for the input!

Thanks for writing down all the characters, PiyozR! I'm gonna go see if I can find any plausible sounds I can assign to them.

Assigning sounds is basically what I'm starting to do now. I'm going to post new versions of those graph paper scans with the 115 letter alphabet with International Phonetic Alphabet markers. I am going to do it in pencil in case you guys think differently than I do.

Hello everyone! I'm a huge language nerd and was originally going to figure out this whole language myself
(As I have done before on other various languages) until I found this amazing thread! Instead I find it
in my best interest to team up with you guys and interpret and figure out every single little detail and resolve
any confliction or problem there may be with the material that we are given.

I truly believe that this language can be speakable even if it was never meant to be!

Language nerds unite! The only thing stopping us is our laziness or getting distracted by Kelp Dome.

@Dimfish so it's definitely based more around english than japanese right? or is it a mixture?

Splatoon is a game made in Japan with a sizable English-speaking audience. The way that the letters are drawn seems to go along with that. As I go on assigning sounds to this alphabet, I'm going to try to make it sound not unlike Japanese or English. Seeing as I've never studied Japanese before, I may have to do a little research on that noises exist in the Japanese language.

I posted the Splatfest tees for cat and dog, so here's the ones for Japan, bread (pan) vs rice (gohan):

These clearly say the transliterated Japanese words "pan" and "gohan." But wait! There's another one for bread that I saw in the trailer!

Older/newer version? or… what

It's like Nintendo has seen this thread and is trying to throw a wrench in our plan.

WE WILL NEVER GIVE UP THE FIGHT!!!

 

[spiffy]

@Dimfish this should help! japanese kana (the simpler writing system) is made of syllables rather than letters. this link doesn't include "contraction" sounds like cha, rya, hya, pya, nya, etc but hopefully it will be a useful point of reference.

 

[eli]

i guess people are just saying things either obviously untrue, already established, or without any evidence now

also

this language was really not meant to be deciphered

that'd imply there's something TO decipher, not just often arbitrarily-chosen characters from a created character set…

 

[yokokazuo]

With Splatfest starting in just 12 and a half hours in Japan, there are now some trucks with equipment setting up for it. On the trucks, there is a licence plate which resembles Japanese ones.

On Japanese licence plates, there is a hiragana on the left side and four numbers to the right of it.
On the green one, the numbers look like a 70(or 8)34, but the first number/numbers on the orange one looks like the "hiragana" on the green one followed by what looks like a 7 then a 1 or the same symbol as the "hiragana" for the orange plate.

 

[Joseph Staleknight]

Hmm, interesting. Between that and the signage at Walleye Warehouse and Port Mackerel, I think we might have a better idea of how numbers work in Inkling. The only thing I'm concerned about is whether they actually count in decimal, but I guess that's another topic for later.

In other news, I'm also vectorizing PiyozR's sketches so that hopefully we have something scalable to work with when the time comes to expand on the language. Right now, I'm just about done with the first page and then some.

EDIT: Okay, I've finished up making vectors of the glyphs, and now they're attached to this post! A few notes:

• First off, I checked the sketches and found that numbers 90 and 23 were duplicates. Thus, I replaced 90 with another glyph.
• Additionally, I added a few other glyphs that were in the game but not in the sketches (such as the inverted R).
  
• Also, glyph 115 and the variants for glyphs 52 and 53 were too stylistically different from the others, so I decided to make them fit in.
• Finally, I created both an EPS and a 3-page PDF so that anyone savvy enough with vector programs like Illustrator can use these as a basis for typeface variations.

Feedback is greatly appreciated!

 

[PiyozR]

View attachment 619 View attachment 620

Thanks for the share. I'm going to tackle the numbers and punctuation next.

Attached are the (first draft of) the full Inkling alphabet. I added International Phonetic Alphabet notation so you can now speak and read and create basic words! Check it out and see if I made any dumb mistakes or missed anything.

Also I wrote my name in Inkling. Send me a PM with your name and I'll write it for you.

 

[Poltersquid]

Thanks for the share. I'm going to tackle the numbers and punctuation next.

Attached are the (first draft of) the full Inkling alphabet. I added International Phonetic Alphabet notation so you can now speak and read and create basic words! Check it out and see if I made any dumb mistakes or missed anything.

Also I wrote my name in Inkling. Send me a PM with your name and I'll write it for you.

wow, just found this post (and this site) and I really like the work being done here, I don't think I can really contribute much at this point, but if I find anything of worth, I'll let yall know

 

[Joseph Staleknight]

Ah, neat! There are couple issues, though. Glpyhs 2 and 80 have the same pronunciation, as do 34 and 39 (oh, and 72 and 96. Didn't check those two until recently). Granted, it might just be that 39 is supposed to be /ʊjo/ rather than /ujo/, but I don't see the /ʊ/ anywhere else.

Still, awesome work! I'll see about arranging the glyphs into some sort of grid based on pronunciation.

 

[NLALEX]

When it comes to Inkling for me the biggest hurdle is the sheer number of characters. You could argue that it's a syllable-based alphabet like Japanese which would make sense given the game's origin, but it doesn't answer why the logo for the in-game brand Forge has so many characters making up its name.

It's entirely possible that Inking uses a phonetic alphabet similar to IPA. This would allow a much greater number of potential characters which correlates well with what is seen in the game, but it still doesn't answer everything. It is also possible that Inkling has several alphabets for different situations, which is unlikely but not impossible (as well as impractical).

It is also worth pointing out that the Squid Sisters vid from the Direct is subbed in Inkling:

This not only shows that Inkling has word boundaries unlike many Asian languages, but also that the character strings range in length enormously. Some of what appear to be multiple words when sung are subbed as being single strings, suggesting that it's common for compound nouns to be presented as single words in a similar fashion to Modern German.

Another note to take from this video is that the first line of the song is nearly identical to the text that appears above 'Squid Sisters' just moments beforehand. The first two strings are identical, and considering the subs supposedly say 'Squid Sisters' in Inkling, it's possible that Inkling may use some form of reduplication for plurality, and that this word is 'squid' or 'sister'. If this is true it would also indicate that noun order is reversed compared to English (where the head of the compound noun occurs at the end), and would likely mean that Inkling is a largely post-modifying language as opposed to pre-modifying.

This isn't particularly in depth at all but I thought I'd slap some info out there!

 

[PiyozR]

Ah, neat! There are couple issues, though. Glpyhs 2 and 80 have the same pronunciation, as do 34 and 39 (oh, and 72 and 96. Didn't check those two until recently). Granted, it might just be that 39 is supposed to be /ʊjo/ rather than /ujo/, but I don't see the /ʊ/ anywhere else.

Still, awesome work! I'll see about arranging the glyphs into some sort of grid based on pronunciation.

Ah darn it! I looked this over a bunch of times and still didn't notice! Thanks for pointing those out. And to be clear, for #39 it is [ujo]. I didn't plan on having the [ʊ] vowel in Inkling. That's just me writing it by hand sloppily. #2 will be changed to (pronounced EE). #39 will be changed to [uno] (pronounced oo-NO). #96 will be changed to [boi] (boo-EE). I'm attaching the same grids again with the corrected notations as well as some light editing for clarity's sake.

And yeah, arranging all these letters by pronunciation is probably more useful than arranging them by form (like I did). Thank Sakurai I did this in pencil. I knew I'd make small mistakes like this.

-snip-

All very good thoughts, NLALEX. I was thinking something similar. I imagine Inkling to be a language reversed from English in that compound nouns have the main noun before the secondary noun, adjectives after their nouns, adverbs before their antecedents, family names before their given names, etc. Aside from that, in this thread we're not thinking that there is any established Inkling or Octarian phonetics in Splatoon. Sure, some letters might match up sometimes, but that's most likely video editors having fun than an actual, natural language. That's why we're doing this from the ground up.

EDIT: I just saw the PDF that Joseph Staleknight posted. Good work! I'm going to edit your #90 onto my hand-drawn copy and use that instead of two horizontal lines. After all, two horizontal lines is (implied to be) the non-serif form of #2. Yeah, let's go with that. Your suggestion of the upside-down half circle with two lines sticking out of it will be the new #90, and will still be pronounced [ise].

As for your additions for 116, 117, and the variant of 76. I am going to add those to another page of mine with some sounds, too. For now, let's say that 116 is [ʃa] and 117 is [ʃo]. As for the 76 variant, let's say that all the "e" type glyphs (73-80) can also be written as flat ovals with one curved line coming out of it? How does that work?

 

[NLALEX]

All very good thoughts, NLALEX. I was thinking something similar. I imagine Inkling to be a language reversed from English in that compound nouns have the main noun before the secondary noun, adjectives after their nouns, adverbs before their antecedents, family names before their given names, etc. Aside from that, in this thread we're not thinking that there is any established Inkling or Octarian phonetics in Splatoon. Sure, some letters might match up sometimes, but that's most likely video editors having fun than an actual, natural language. That's why we're doing this from the ground up.

I think it's a bit of a leap to start talking about proper nouns! I understand that the 'speech' in the video clearly has no correlation to the language displayed below, but it's impossible to deny we get some seriously long strings in there, much longer than you'd really expect in a pop song which generally have fairly simple language in order to appeal to a wide audience, hence my idea regarding compound words.

There are any number of languages that could have been used for inspiration for Inkling, so we can't assume that English or Japanese would be an appropriate starting point (although there is clearly some English inspiration in the cat/dog shirts). It's entirely possible that what were' looking at here is complete gobbledigook.

 

[PiyozR]

There are any number of languages that could have been used for inspiration for Inkling, so we can't assume that English or Japanese would be an appropriate starting point (although there is clearly some English inspiration in the cat/dog shirts). It's entirely possible that what were' looking at here is complete gobbledigook.

I'm betting it's all gobbledygook. Unless Nintendo comes out with some LOZ-style cipher or something.

 

[Joseph Staleknight]

Ah darn it! I looked this over a bunch of times and still didn't notice! Thanks for pointing those out. And to be clear, for #39 it is [ujo]. I didn't plan on having the [ʊ] vowel in Inkling. That's just me writing it by hand sloppily. #2 will be changed to (pronounced EE). #39 will be changed to [uno] (pronounced oo-NO). #96 will be changed to [boi] (boo-EE). I'm attaching the same grids again with the corrected notations as well as some light editing for clarity's sake.

Neat! Unfortunately, checking your notes again I noticed that 96 now shares sounds with 65. I'd probably change either to [bie] since the [ie] column is looking pretty sparse.

As for your additions for 116, 117, and the variant of 76. I am going to add those to another page of mine with some sounds, too. For now, let's say that 116 is [ʃa] and 117 is [ʃo]. As for the 76 variant, let's say that all the "e" type glyphs (73-80) can also be written as flat ovals with one curved line coming out of it? How does that work?

Sounds fair enough. Let's go with that!