Inkling: The Language of Splatoon

[GalacticGrandma]

Going by the chart posted by @Joseph Staleknight, I'm a tad confused. Character 109S has to make two different sounds, 'də' and 'əʊ' in order to spell 'Dojo' ('dōˌjō'). If the order of the center sign is 109S, 119, ??? , 109S, and 119 making the 'ho' sound and the ??? (character that looks like a boxed-8) making the 'juh' sound (J is considered it's own sound, it's not a phonetic character unless you count the soft 'G's but this is the best I got); would that make character 109S a blending sound or a signal of tone? How can we solve this? [Also, we need to account for the missing character on the chart]

 

[MissingNumbers]

I would sooner think that the big text says "1 vs 1", actually. The picture below it seems to suggest it as well.

 

[GalacticGrandma]

I would sooner think that the big text says "1 vs 1", actually. The picture below it seems to suggest it as well.

The side signs are 'battle' and 119 according to the chart makes the 'oh' sound which fits in 'Dojo' and not 'versus'. While it is plausible it's one versus one, recent evidence says otherwise. Who knows, maybe the 'Dojo' sign is what makes or breaks the chart. o_O

 

[PiyozR]

Going by the chart posted by @Joseph Staleknight, I'm a tad confused. Character 109S has to make two different sounds, 'də' and 'əʊ' in order to spell 'Dojo' ('dōˌjō'). If the order of the center sign is 109S, 119, ??? , 109S, and 119 making the 'ho' sound and the ??? (character that looks like a boxed-8) making the 'juh' sound (J is considered it's own sound, it's not a phonetic character unless you count the soft 'G's but this is the best I got); would that make character 109S a blending sound or a signal of tone? How can we solve this? [Also, we need to account for the missing character on the chart]

For one, I'm not going to assume that any Inkling in Inkopolis is going to match up with the English or Japanese pronunciation even remotely. For two, the letters seen throughout the game are without a doubt nonsense regardless. I checked, and all those letters are on our syllabary.

Now for tonight's update. Attached I have the pronouns of Inkling. I, you, he/she/it, us, y'all, and they.

Also attached is a chart of forty Inkling verbs that should hopefully be useful at this stage. From "to be" to the slang word for "splat", this should be a good foundation for building a vocabulary. Check it out and feel free to add your own.

The third image is the Inkling way to say "hello". These are the same two words seen on t-shirts and on the amiibo's. It's pronounced like "eeroo" and it means "I rise" or "I ascend" or "I wake up" in that it's what an Inkling would say in the morning when getting up from bed. This "roo" is also the word for "climb", i.e. what you do in Arowana Mall when you're trying to climb up the walls to the higher platforms.

The fourth is my first Inkling sentence! [*Villager taunt dance*] "Hello, my name is Piyoz."

Next up on the agenda, recovering from E3 and creating some basic nouns. Check back whenever I actually get that done.

 

[eli]

Is it possible to assign an inkling character to two or three keystrokes?

Unfortunately no – not without crazy technically-ligatures/OpenType stuff that I'm not super sure about. I can definitely assign letters or alternate forms to non-standard characters, though, so we could definitely have glyphs assigned to, say, , or one glyph assigned to "n" and a variation to "ñ" or something like that. Looks like @Poltersquid mentioned this as well.

It would be best to have our "core" alphabet of the most widely used glyphs be A-Z/a-z (26 + 26 = 52 in total, plus 10 numbers and a few various symbols/punctuation). Any ideas which I should assign to the standard keyboard keys, and which I should assign to lesser-pressed keys?

Again, this comes back to the question, "what key should we have to press to type the (for example) circle-with-a-hook character?" That is, should the first line of the Squid Sisters song be able to be typed by typing, e.g., "FNJ FNJ STG", or should it be "GHT GHT ELN"? Any ideas for this would be appreciated, otherwise I'll just make it random/arbitrary (perhaps based a bit on the IPA, but that can only go so far.)

 

[doop]

is octoling the same as inkling

 

[Avpapaya]

Hi guys, great work here. I just wanted to share my observation about inkling.. Inkling is created and used by Japanese developers and graphic artists. They're most likely not going to use something they can't easily translate from Japanese. Since there are 3 types of characters in Japanese, maybe you guys should be looking for the same in Inkling: regular speech in one type like hiragana; English-transliterated words in another as in Katakana, and some unique-gliphs like Kanji. The confusing could be result of all 3 types often sounding exactly the same.

 

[PiyozR]

Unfortunately no – not without crazy technically-ligatures/OpenType stuff that I'm not super sure about. I can definitely assign letters or alternate forms to non-standard characters, though, so we could definitely have glyphs assigned to, say, , or one glyph assigned to "n" and a variation to "ñ" or something like that. Looks like @Poltersquid mentioned this as well.

It would be best to have our "core" alphabet of the most widely used glyphs be A-Z/a-z (26 + 26 = 52 in total, plus 10 numbers and a few various symbols/punctuation). Any ideas which I should assign to the standard keyboard keys, and which I should assign to lesser-pressed keys?

Again, this comes back to the question, "what key should we have to press to type the (for example) circle-with-a-hook character?" That is, should the first line of the Squid Sisters song be able to be typed by typing, e.g., "FNJ FNJ STG", or should it be "GHT GHT ELN"? Any ideas for this would be appreciated, otherwise I'll just make it random/arbitrary (perhaps based a bit on the IPA, but that can only go so far.)

Ah, I see. I'm not really sure what to say. The "o" letters and the "e" letters are very common in Inkling. All the others are used equally frequently. Outside of that, I'm not quite sure what to tell ya. I could mention that for the purposes of a single font, it's okay to have only the serif glyphs (and not the rounded alternates). That leaves a mere 126 letters to be represented by 26 lower case letters, 26 capital letters, `, ~, !, @, #, $, %, ^, &, *, (, ), -, _, =, +, [, {, ], }, \, |, ;, :, ', ", ,, <, ., >, / and ?. That's 84. Could we find 42 more letters like ñ, é, ô, ç, and others like that?

is octoling the same as inkling

No.

Hi guys, great work here. I just wanted to share my observation about inkling.. Inkling is created and used by Japanese developers and graphic artists. They're most likely not going to use something they can't easily translate from Japanese. Since there are 3 types of characters in Japanese, maybe you guys should be looking for the same in Inkling: regular speech in one type like hiragana; English-transliterated words in another as in Katakana, and some unique-gliphs like Kanji. The confusing could be result of all 3 types often sounding exactly the same.

that's something that I considered. While Splatoon's languages clearly take some inspiration from Japanese characters, it doesn't look like the same logic applies here. Inkling is composed of fifty-two unique base characters that are flipped, flopped, rounded, or given an extra marking to provide another sound altogether or simply another glyph of the same pronunciation.

 

[Apostrophe]

Hey guys, I have to say I am thoroughly impressed by your dedication to this. I just read over this entire thread and had a thought for the inking font. Maybe there should be a version that uses characters that are similar to the corresponding English character (with capitals being another similar variation/rotation) so we could make pseudo words like the "Pan", "Dog" "On air" words.

Just thought it would be fun to have a option that doesn't require learning a new language (We could also so it for hiragana/katakana to, if it's not too difficult.)

 

[aggravatedTranscription]

@PiyozR Quick question, are glyphs 66 and 67, and 68 and 69 supposed to be pronounced the same?

 

[PiyozR]

@PiyozR Quick question, are glyphs 66 and 67, and 68 and 69 supposed to be pronounced the same?

Yes they are. I just hadn't decided that until after I drew them. You'll find lots of glyphs throughout Splatoon that are simple flips or rotations of what's on our syllabary that aren't listed but are still essentially the same letter. We made it flexible like that just to cover all our bases. Mostly because I want to finish this before I die.

Attached is tonight's progress. First up is a list of prepositions. These are essential for later.

Second is a list of some (hopefully) useful nouns, both proper and normal. Included are the words for Inklings, Octarians, the Squid Sisters by group and by name, and many other things you'd see around Inkopolis. It's one of probably two that I'll make. Anyone who has suggestions for more nouns, some adjectives, and other parts of speech is welcome to suggest anything they want me to make. Tomorrow I'll probably do some conjunctions.

 

[eli]

The "o" letters and the "e" letters are very common in Inkling.

What do you mean by this – what glyphs/symbols?

Could we find 42 more letters like ñ, é, ô, ç, and others like that?

Likely, yes. :) I'll let you know (i.e. post here) if there are any issues.

I've been a bit busy with E3 this week but I should be able to get everything done by this weekend!

 

[Nickfire47]

Well there is hope after all!

 

[PiyozR]

What do you mean by this – what glyphs/symbols?

Sorry, I should have used the numbers. I meant 30 through and 36 and 73 through 80.

I've been a bit busy with E3 this week but I should be able to get everything done by this weekend!

Yeah, same here. Mostly irl stuff that will keep me from writing more words for most of the weekend.

Well there is hope after all!

Honestly, I don't see it happening. I really wish I'm wrong because that'd be really impressive on Nintendo's part.

 

[eli]

I meant 30 through and 36 and 73 through 80.

Ah, makes sense. :) I currently have the 'e'-looking character (to be exact, #76) mapped to C [although I could make it 'E' if we want it more similar to English transliteration?] and the 'o'-looking one (variant #34 but made it a bit more rounded) mapped to O.

 

[eli]

first four lines (at least) are done...

 

[DarkGalahad]

Are you guys sure that the english speaking people from nintendo are actually a credible resource on figuring out if the language is actually gibberish? Because whenever you look into the credits of any nintendo game it is always all japanese names. Also, considering the actual part of nintendo that creates the game is stationed in japan, these two facts ive just stated may mean that this Lindsay woman who emailed one of the people on this forum could just be making stuff up. The people who send emails to us and are part of nintendo customer service do in fact NOT create any of the games because they are stationed in America. Not where the games are actually created. I dont think people who arent part of the game creation division of the company are informed of the actual creation of the game before launch nor after. This woman is probably just doing her job by emailing you back and is just stating her opinion and claiming it as factual. I'd really like a response from you guys on this.In my opinion i would think that the actual creation of the game would be kept classified and secret from the people who didnt create the games such as nintendo customer service which emailed one of us

 

[Poltersquid]

Are you guys sure that the english speaking people from nintendo are actually a credible resource on figuring out if the language is actually gibberish? Because whenever you look into the credits of any nintendo game it is always all japanese names. Also, considering the actual part of nintendo that creates the game is stationed in japan, these two facts ive just stated may mean that this Lindsay woman who emailed one of the people on this forum could just be making stuff up. The people who send emails to us and are part of nintendo customer service do in fact NOT create any of the games because they are stationed in America. Not where the games are actually created. I dont think people who arent part of the game creation division of the company are informed of the actual creation of the game before launch nor after. This woman is probably just doing her job by emailing you back and is just stating her opinion and claiming it as factual. I'd really like a response from you guys on this.

it is true that the games are made in japan, however the american workers are responsible for the localization of the game, translating the words and changing details to fit the area its in. Due to this, its likely they would have knowledge of if the text and speech is translatable or not. On the other hand, the person you are speaking to is most likely only a helpdesk employee, so might not have that info.

 

[polysaw]

Hi everyone,

I'm kind of a language fanatic and I just wanted to say that I'm super amazed at all the work you've done so far!! I know you've been working really hard on this language Piyoz, but I was wondering a few things. Grammar wise, I noticed that your list of prepositions and the word order shown in your sentence seems to be a directly from English. Is Inkling going to be grammatically based off of Western European languages? Will there be aspects from other languages too such as noun cases, varying word order, particles, etc? Just a few thoughts. I really love your organization of the glyphs, and I'm really looking forward to the development of this language!!

 

[freefun55]

I have always been wondering but I think it is a functioning language, don't have much proof yet though