Inkling: The Language of Splatoon

[Cukee]

IIRC the inkling says "Ready" when an inkstrike is well, ready, don't remember if it happens with every special, as been using inkbrush almost exclusively.
Is this discarded as "inkling" and is just an audio aid to let you know the special is charged?

 

[MissingNumbers]

IIRC the inkling says "Ready" when an inkstrike is well, ready, don't remember if it happens with every special, as been using inkbrush almost exclusively.
Is this discarded as "inkling" and is just an audio aid to let you know the special is charged?

It and a few more voice clips are said once activating a special or landing a super jump.

 

[Cukee]

It and a few more voice clips are said once activating a special or landing a super jump.

I knew there were more English voice clips somewhere, thank you for remind me where. So are all these voice clips ruled out? or people just suppose that inklings use English words every now and then like the Nihonjin in anime just to sound fresh and the rest is gibberish?

 

[MissingNumbers]

I knew there were more English voice clips somewhere, thank you for remind me where.

I didn't say they were English, I said when the voice clips happened.

 

[Infixation]

To my understanding it actually IS English, just with some filters and edits put in it to make it sonud like another language.

 

[plokijjikolp]

I still have a gut feeling that there's a missing piece of the puzzle...
Only time will tell, I guess.

 

[crunchgames]

Not sure if this is helpful or if anyone still works on this, but you can hear talking from a beakon, try it but not online as you won't hear it properly.

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

Hello people, I created an account to see what people have figured out in regards to this. I've been trying to decipher the Inkling language on my own for a few weeks now, though it looks like there is one key but drastic difference: It seems that most or all of you attempting to solve it have a background of linguistics. I come from a totally different direction: My experience is in cryptanalysis. (That is, codebreaking. I was that kid who was upset that puzzle books would provide you a decoded letter to get started.) And looking at what I can see, there is at least some coherent logic in the text, and all signs point to it being interpretable. (Something I think is important to bear in mind is that whereas linguistics is more art-based, as far as thinking goes, and focuses on word usage, cryptography is tightly bound to mathematics and is analytics-based.)

I don't know how solving an unknown language works, but in cryptanalysis, the more text you have, the higher your chances of breaking the code. Hence, I'm gathering as many instances of in-game text as possible, including multiple instances of the same word in different environments.

As my knowledge of Japanese is extremely low, I have focused on what I believe to be either English or an approximation of such. I have gathered all the in-game text I can find (I am avoiding anything not in-game as they'd be made by different people who may not fully understand the character sets). The first thing I noticed was that there are at least six character sets, which seems to be the conclusion you guys have figured, and they seem to be the same six:
1. Hiragana
2. Katakana
3. Kanji
4. English (why this is not Romaji, Roman, or any other character set derived from Roman, I'll explain in a moment)
5. Numerals
6. Octarian (I have not come close to cracking this one)
(7.) punctuation, if it counts.
(8.) There is also a character set pertaining to the jellyfish language, but it's so rarely seen in-game that I don't think anyone can even begin to attempt to solve it.

Based on what I have independently studied, I have determined, beyond a reasonable doubt, much of the numeral system. It's the character set with by far the fewest characters and thus the easiest one to crack. Inkling uses a base-10 system with the same place value as western culture. I have figured out the numerals for 0 through 5, plus 7, and I have characters representing 6, 8, and 9, but I do not know which characters correspond to which values. These characters representing numerals I've come up with do not line up with that of PiyozR's, but more on that later.

But the thing that made me absolutely sure there is a method to the numeral system? Someone forgot to encrypt the numbers on the bar graph in Sunken Scroll #6:

You can see here, pretty clearly, that the y-axis reads "0 5 10 15," and the x-axis reads "'75 '85 '90 '95."

There is one snag though: With the Flounder Heights stage released, I have discovered what seems to be an 11th numeral. Or at least, there are 11 characters used in numeral strings. That being said, one of these characters exists only at the end of numeral strings, so it may be a punctuation mark or a mathematical symbol.

Before I begin with Inkling English, a ridiculously common fallacy is to think that all codes are one-to-one substitution ciphers. Most codes created by non-cryptographers are. Hylian is like that (as mentioned earlier in this topic). The Space Dandy language is like that too. The Inklings' English character set does not seem to be this way. It is far more complex than that, with different rules applied to different statements, and it would require more advanced codebreaking techniques. I wouldn't be surprised, by the way, if the same person who created the Hylian written languages made this too, building upon Hylian to make Inkling more complex.

The biggest thing to determine if this is gibberish or not is character frequency. That is, there must be some characters that are used more than others, but every character must have a certain minimum frequency. All in all, if you make a line graph with the characters on the x-axis in ascending order and the frequency of these letters on the y-axis, it should produce an exponential curve, which, from the text I've gathered so far that I've deduced to be part of the English character set, it does. (Every single language that uses multiple characters to represent a word follows this pattern.) However, the frequencies don't line up that well with English--but only as written by those fluent in English. If this was gibberish, or at least completely random, then either every character would have roughly even frequency (it does not), or some characters would be enormously frequent while others are almost never seen at all (not like this either).

The next thing to consider is that while the English language has 26 letters, it actually has 52 characters. That is, each letter consists of two characters: An upper-case one and a lower-case one. I believe Inkling English has separate characters for upper-case and lower-case, making this...still quite likely a substition cipher, but with two possible characters for each letter. And just like in English, the upper-case letter does not always resemble its lower-case counterpart. I believe this is a major stumbling block, as people are likely to assume they are two different characters with different functions. It's also the reason why I believe this is an English character set, and not Romaji or Roman (as the former doesn't make much use of lower-case letters and the latter doesn't use them at all).

Something else that throws people off is that the Inkling language does not seem to be concerned with how characters are oriented. I studied some of my samples in detail and realized that, pretty often, text is actually written upside-down or sideways. I don't know if it's a stylistic choice or to make it harder for anyone trying to crack this character set, but it is pretty weird.

Another observation I made: There are absolutely no single-letter words, very few two- or three-letter words, and a disproportionate amount of very long words. This leads me to believe that, while a few bits of text were created from English words and phrases, the majority of in-game text is actually Japanese, transliterated into Romaji, sometimes modified to have upper- and lower-case letters, then substituted into Inkling characters. This would create a lot of difficulty for me once I actually start delving into decryption.

The biggest thing slowing me down on this front, besides my lack of knowledge of the Japanese languages, is that there are almost no long phrases in Inkling English. They are almost all street signs, brand names (which can be nonsense words), and short slogans and stuff. Cryptanalysis relies on text of sufficient length (since this is a dual-alphabet substitution cipher, a minimum of roughly 54 letters in one message are needed to reliably crack it), and nothing exists in-game that I've seen that is that long. However, I have already deduced the meaning of certain short phrases and signs.

To that end, I have guesses on 14 upper-case letters and 7 lower-case letters, with vastly varying degrees of certainty on them. (I am quite certain of the lower-case "f" and of the upper-case "C," for instance, but I am not sure at all about what I think the lower-case "r" is or the upper-case "V.") I've also deduced 4 Inkling hiragana characters.

I will create updates if I have any significant breakthroughs in Inkling numerals and Inkling English.

One last note: I do not have the game. If I can crack at least the numeral and English-derived parts of it, however, I will get the game, and I'll make a YouTube video detailing what I've found, as I can't properly demonstrate it without creating my own footage.

 

[Tomato]

I suppose I should join in to help. I have no background in linguistics, though, so I probably won't be too useful, heh. x.x

In my spare time, I've transcribed the final boss second phase's music, and I'm planning to do the Splatfest dance soon. I'm not too familiar with IPA, however, and it might not be necessary to post since @цııര=៲ has done it already (I hear different syllables, however, so it could be useful).

I believe the written language is organized, while the in-game spoken language is Animal Crossing-like gibberish. It's very likely the vocals in music are also gibberish, but I'm not too sure. The only Inkling phrase with a known translation is "БNII БNII qrP" (characters inaccurate), meaning "Squid Sisters". The fact that the first two words are the same implies Inkling uses a form of noun duplication for plurals. I believe БNII is actually "squid" instead of "sister", however, since this word is shown frequently in the subtitles during the Nintendo Direct's music.
It's possible they're singing about themselves, however; if this is the case, it greatly deepens the game's lore. It's also possible that phrase is just the song's title, unrelated to "Squid Sisters", but the way it was presented doesn't feel like that.

Also, Callie and Marie say different phrases at "Stay Fresh!", according to the sound files. Callie says something similar to "Supraaz!" and Marie says something similar to "See-kez!". Along with the fact that their sound file names are called e.g. IdolAoriVoice_RandomNormal00.wav (besides specific sounds, with names such as N0031H00.wav for Marie's "All right!/Splatastic!"), I'm convinced their spoken language is gibberish.

 

[PiyozR]

@Zombie Aladdin That's some impressive work! Yes, most of us working on the Inkling language have some knowledge of linguistics, but I think we're all lacking in cryptography. That's where you come in.

I think that if your research so far has proven anything, it is this: there is no Inkling language in Splatoon. What I mean is that our previous conclusion that Splatoon's text is entirely nonsense has been basically disproved. You've proven to me that there is in fact some rhyme and reason to the distribution of characters throughout Splatoon. That rhyme and reason is that there is some base language from the real world (likely English or Japanese) used as a foundation upon which specially-designed Inkling characters were replaced for the purpose of providing the game's world with a bizarre and alien appearance. A pretty effective one, too. What I'd like to add here is some further context about why this might be.

Let's say that you're a project manager at Nintendo. You have a team of art designers at your disposal who've been assigned the task of creating labels, signs, and entire blocks of text in a bizarre and alien language that the player is not meant to understand. Not a huge task, really. Many games have done this before. Even Nintendo games. Now which way of accomplishing this is going to be a more effective use of time and resources?

1) Establish a character pool and throw them at Splatoon randomly one-by-one for the likely hundreds of words throughout the game, or...

2) Use words and phrases from an established real world language (maybe Japanese or English) and then create a simple cipher system (not necessarily one-to-one but still quite simple) to swap out English/Japanese/whatever for a pool of Inkling characters?

Yeah, the second one is going to be the best use of time for filling in street signs and walls of text in the Sunken Scrolls. I think we linguists really didn't give Nintendo enough credit here. You've shown to us that there is some method to the madness. Nintendo simply used some method (that we'll likely never truly figure out entirely) of changing real world words and phrases into Splatoon words and phrases for the purposes of cool graphic design. But you see, that's the endgame here. Cool-looking text on the streets of Inkopolis. Not an actual, functioning, living and breathing language. Any syntax or semantics are borrowed from the Japanese or English used as tools to generate the Inklings' t-shirt logos and lore.

And that's fine, honestly. A big company like Nintendo has better things to be spending their time and money on than creating a unique language with phonetics and grammar and stuff. I mean, I don't. 'Cuz my friends all live in other cities now and girls don't like me. I need something to do with my time between work and Splatfests. While your research has proven us wrong in our assumptions about Splatoon's in-game text, it has also strangely proven our efforts in creating a fan language to be even more legitimate. Weird how that works. In any case, I look forward to seeing further research into the crypto-analysis of Splatoon's Inkling!

BTW Space Dandy rocks.

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

Well, I haven't shown any of my work, so it's interesting you'd put so much faith into it. I guess I should at least demonstrate what I know about the Inkling numeral system:

This was derived from a combination of the signs hanging from the ceiling in Walleye Warehouse, a small sign posted in Camp Triggerfish that happened to read "1234," the datestamps and timestamps on the photographs of the initial news reports about the missing Great Zapfish and the "UFO" sighting, the markings on the shipping crates in various stages (mostly Port Mackerel, as the lighting is brightest there), and the advertisements in Arowana Mall indicating some event that has happened. Through this, I can also deduce Splatoon is set in the Inkling year 2015 and that those events in Arowana Mall have already happened. You will also find that, no matter where in the game the characters in this numeral set are located, they are always found together.

Although I don't know the values of all of the numerals, or why there's an excess one (I'm guessing the "A" looking one and its upside-down counterpart are the same numeral, or the one at the end is the punctuation mark/mathematical sign I mentioned earlier), I can now produce Inkling Sudoku:

(Go ahead and try solving it if you'd like.)

Progress on Inkling English is still very incomplete, and I don't feel ready to show what I've figured out so far. However, I am pretty sure I am on the right track--of the vowels I have figured, they fall into logical patterns.

By the way, I think I should explain a few basics of cryptanalysis, as I don't know if I can do this alone.

What some of you had assumed was that this would be a simple substitution cipher or monoalphabetic substitution cipher. In such a cipher, each letter corresponds to one and only one other letter. This is the sort of cipher you see in newspapers and used for decoder rings in those old-fashioned cereal boxes. You almost never see any other sort of cipher, so I can see why most people think that this is the only kind of cipher that exists. This is the most easily broken cipher, and even without spaces, simple substitution ciphers have been broken almost as soon as they were made.

Inkling English is a polyalphabetic substitution cipher, albeit a nontraditional one. In such a cipher, multiple characters can stand for one letter. Perhaps the most famous of these kinds of ciphers is the Vigenère cipher, a type of encryption invented in the 16th century. In a Vigenère cipher, each letter is encoded in a different way, in a repeating pattern using a key known to both the sender and receiver of the message. Vigenère ciphers remained unbreakable for three hundred years (when Friedrich Kasiski and Charles Babbage independently came up with techniques to decrypt such messages). Inkling English is not nearly as complicated as a Vigenère cipher, but I just used that as an example on how encryption got complex real fast.

Finally, the original message is called plaintext.

(A bit of trivia: If any of you are familiar with Gravity Falls, you may have noticed an encrypted message at the end of each episode. Each Season 1 episode uses a simple substitution cipher, and each Season 2 episode uses a Vigenère cipher with a key hidden in each episode.)

Now, onto the meat of the matter: Decryption. Every cipher that has ever been broken was done so through knowlege of patterns in the language of the plaintext message and through intuition. Substitution ciphers, at least up to a certain complexity (one-time pads are incredibly difficult to crack, and modern computer-based encryption is downright impossible without a powerful decryption program of your own), can be solved using a technique called frequency analysis. This technique involves finding the most common characters in an encrypted message and assigning them the most common characters in the plaintext's language. In the case of English, the most common letter is E, followed by T, then A, then O, then U, then I, then N. Hence, if you're given a substitution cipher, especially a simple one, the best way to tackle it is to find which letters are the most common and keep trying combinations until they make sense. (Frequency analysis won't always get you the correct answer on the first try, but the longer the message, the easier it will be.) I'll show you an example of how powerful a tool frequency analysis is through an example. Here is a message encrypted with a simple substitution cipher:

DWVLWSGWDDWVLDMHDRIDMLKYLIDRWGZMLDMLSDRIGWVJLSRGDMLBRGCDWIYUULSDMLIJRGNIHGC
HSSWZIWUWYDSHNLWYIUWSDYGLWSDWDHFLHSBIHNHRGIDHILHWUDSWYVJLIHGCVEWAAWIRGNLGCD
MLBDWCRLDWIJLLAGWBWSLHGCVEHIJLLADWIHEZLLGCDMLMLHSDHQMLHGCDMLDMWYIHGCGHDYSHJ
IMWQFIDMHDUJLIMRIMLRSDW

Looks daunting? It actually isn't. If you apply frequency analysis, you'll see that each letter's frequency, in order of most to least, are as follows:
L: 31
D: 30
W: 26
H: 21
I: 21
G: 18
M: 16
S: 15
R: 11
C: 9
Y: 8
J: 7
U: 6
V: 6
A: 4
B: 4
N: 4
E: 3
Z: 3
F: 2
Q: 2
K: 1
O: 0
P: 0
T: 0
X: 0

Since L and D are the two most common letters, respectively, let's replace each "L" with "e" and each "D" with "t" and see what happens:

tWVeWSGWttWVetMHtRItMeKYeItRWGZMetMeStRIGWVJeSRGtMeBRGCtWIYUUeStMeIJRGNIHGC
HSSWZIWUWYtSHNeWYIUWStYGeWStWtHFeHSBIHNHRGItHIeHWUtSWYVJeIHGCVEWAAWIRGNeGCt
MeBtWCRetWIJeeAGWBWSeHGCVEHIJeeAtWIHEZeeGCtMeMeHStHQMeHGCtMetMWYIHGCGHtYSHJ
IMWQFItMHtUJeIMRIMeRStW

It probably still looks like gobbledygook, but don't let that deter you. If you look carefully, you'll start to see some patterns here. The string "tMe" occurs over and over in this message, at least five times. What absurdly common English word uses "t_e"? That would be "the." Going off this assumption, let's replace "M" with "h," and we get this:

tWVeWSGWttWVethHtRItheKYeItRWGZhetheStRIGWVJeSRGtheBRGCtWIYUUeStheIJRGNIHGC
HSSWZIWUWYtSHNeWYIUWStYGeWStWtHFeHSBIHNHRGItHIeHWUtSWYVJeIHGCVEWAAWIRGNeGCt
heBtWCRetWIJeeAGWBWSeHGCVEHIJeeAtWIHEZeeGCtheheHStHQheHGCthethWYIHGCGHtYSHJ
IhWQFIthHtUJeIhRIheRStW

Something else that you'll see is "thHt" occurring towards the beginning of this message and again towards the end of it. The word that most fits in with "th_t" is "that." Looking at the frequency chart above, "H" occurs very frequently, the fourth-most, after "W." If you substitute "H" with "a," the message becomes as such:

tWVeWSGWttWVethatRItheKYeItRWGZhetheStRIGWVJeSRGtheBRGCtWIYUUeStheIJRGNIaGC
aSSWZIWUWYtSaNeWYIUWStYGeWStWtaFeaSBIaNaRGItaIeaWUtSWYVJeIaGCVEWAAWIRGNeGCt
heBtWCRetWIJeeAGWBWSeaGCVEaIJeeAtWIaEZeeGCtheheaStaQheaGCthethWYIaGCGatYSaJ
IhWQFIthatUJeIhRIheRStW

We've only substituted four letters, but you can see how far this message has been decoded. By now, you can probably make out certain words, though you might not necessarily be sure they're the right ones. Next up, do you see "GC" repeated pretty frequently? It always seems to be "aGC" and "eGC," but mostly "aGC." The most common word in English that's three letters long, begins with "a," and does not have "h," "t," or "e" in it is "and." Let's replace "G" with "n" and "C" with "d."

tWVeWSnWttWVethatRItheKYeItRWnZhetheStRInWVJeSRntheBRndtWIYUUeStheIJRnNIand
aSSWZIWUWYtSaNeWYIUWStYneWStWtaFeaSBIaNaRnItaIeaWUtSWYVJeIandVEWAAWIRnNendt
heBtWdRetWIJeeAnWBWSeandVEaIJeeAtWIaEZeendtheheaStaQheandthethWYIandnatYSaJ
IhWQFIthatUJeIhRIheRStW

And now, entire words can be parsed out. Towards the end, do you see "endtheheaStaQhe"? Removing "end the" from there, you have "heaStaQhe." Seeing it as "hea_ta_he," it must be the word "heartache." "S" must be "r," and "Q" must be "c." (There are only two Q's in this message, but every little bit helps.) Now it becomes:

tWVeWrnWttWVethatRItheKYeItRWnZhethertRInWVJerRntheBRndtWIYUUertheIJRnNIand
arrWZIWUWYtraNeWYIUWrtYneWrtWtaFearBIaNaRnItaIeaWUtrWYVJeIandVEWAAWIRnNendt
heBtWdRetWIJeeAnWBWreandVEaIJeeAtWIaEZeendtheheartacheandthethWYIandnatYraJ
IhWcFIthatUJeIhRIheRrtW

The next obvious world is "natYraJ." "nat_ra_." It must be "natural." Let's change "Y" into "u" and "J" into "l." (Yeah, that makes upper-case I and lower-case "l" confusing now. I hope your font distinguishes them.)

tWVeWrnWttWVethatRItheKueItRWnZhethertRInWVlerRntheBRndtWIuUUertheIlRnNIand
arrWZIWUWutraNeWuIUWrtuneWrtWtaFearBIaNaRnItaIeaWUtrWuVleIandVEWAAWIRnNendt
heBtWdRetWIleeAnWBWreandVEaIleeAtWIaEZeendtheheartacheandthethWuIandnatural
IhWcFIthatUleIhRIheRrtW

By now, the only vowels left are "i" and "o" (not including "y"). If you continue looking towards the end, you'll see "theheartacheandthethQuIandnatural." That "Q" must be a vowel (the only trineme of consonants involving "th_" is "thr," and "r" has already been solved), and no words in English start with "thiu." Therefore, "Q" must be "o."

toVeornottoVethatRItheKueItRonZhethertRInoVlerRntheBRndtoIuUUertheIlRnNIand
arroZIoUoutraNeouIUortuneortotaFearBIaNHRnItaIeaoUtrouVleIandVEoAAoIRnNendt
heBtodRetoIleeAnoBoreandVEaIleeAtoIaEZeendtheheartacheandthethouIandnatural
IhocFIthatUleIhRIheRrto

You know what this message is now, don't you? That's right, it's the Hamlet soliloquy. Suppose you don't know anything past "To be or not to be, that is the question." You will still know that "V" is "b," "R" is "i," "I" is "s," "K" is "q." Plugging them in, we have:

tobeornottobethatisthequestionZhethertisnoblerintheBindtosuUUertheslinNsand
arroZsoUoutraNeousUortuneortotaFearBsaNainstaseaoUtroublesandbEoAAosinNendt
heBtodietosleeAnoBoreandbEasleeAtosaEZeendtheheartacheandthethousandnatural
shocFsthatUleshisheirto

And now the code has been blown wide open. "Zhether" tells you that "Z" is "w." You have "outraNeous," so "N" must be "g." "Uortune" shows "U" is "f."

tobeornottobethatisthequestionwhethertisnoblerintheBindtosuffertheslingsand
arrowsofoutrageousfortuneortotaFearBsagainstaseaoftroublesandbEoAAosingendt
heBtodietosleeAnoBoreandbEasleeAtosaEweendtheheartacheandthethousandnatural
shocFsthatfleshisheirto

"shocFs"? That must be "shocks." "F" must stand for "k."

Also, "andbEasleeA" can be parsed out to become "and bE asleeA." All of the normal vowels have been used, so "E" must be "y." And it's pretty clear by now that "A" must be "p."

tobeornottobethatisthequestionwhethertisnoblerintheBindtosuffertheslingsand
arrowsofoutrageousfortuneortotakearBsagainstaseaoftroublesandbyopposingendt
heBtodietosleepnoBoreandbyasleeptosayweendtheheartacheandthethousandnatural
shocksthatfleshisheirto

"B" is the only one left. Not all of them are obvious, but the one that can help you solve it the best is "fortune or to take arBs against." The only word that can make sense there is "arms," so "B" stands for m." And now you have:

tobeornottobethatisthequestionwhethertisnoblerinthemindtosuffertheslingsand
arrowsofoutrageousfortuneortotakearmsagainstaseaoftroublesandbyopposingendt
hemtodietosleepnomoreandbyasleeptosayweendtheheartacheandthethousandnatural
shocksthatfleshisheirto

"to be or not to be that is the question whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take arms against a sea of troubles and by opposing end them to die to sleep no more and by a sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to"

I hope this wasn't too confusing for you. If you don't understand it all, try re-reading it. But yeah, this is the technique I am using to attack the Inkling code. Even if you don't see how I cracked that message, hopefully you at least see that there's a logic to it all.

 

[Tomato]

I noticed that The Paradise Lost by Octolangelo's "description" on the right is repeated twice, starting on line 10 (skipping line 3), likely to make the text appear longer. There's no in-game reason to repeat the text twice, so it probably indicates the language (at least the Octarian one) is not legitimate, but whether it means this language is random or a cipher is beyond me.

Spoiler: Sunken Scroll image reference

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

Text repeating itself, especially if it's not meant to be quickly read, does not equate to gibberish. This sort of thing pops up all the time in Asian stuff, like this instance of englishenglishenglishenglishenglishenglishenglishenglish. The idea is that if no one notices it, or an insignificant amount of people do, then it's worth getting away with.

 

[aceofscarabs]

Compare the texture someone found at the back of the huge Amiibo Box in Booyah Base to the Japanese Amiibo box. There's probably some scrambling in there.

There's also a r/splatoon thread where they talked about the brand names and translations.

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

Thanks for the link--I didn't know most of the brand names' Japanese namesd. I might be able to break further into this now.

The guys on Reddit are stuck not only on simple substitution ciphers, but that it's solely based on Japanese. There are clearly several character sets, though it can get incredibly confusing as some of them share characters.

 

[DarkGold777]

can you guys translate the songs in the game since you are figuring out translation stuff plzkthxbai

In all seriousness, I think this is an interesting project you have here! Going out of your way to make some sense of the gibberish and the fan-language thing... Before the numbers were posted by you guys, I tried to just make up different shapes for the numbers 4 and 3 for my avatar (as of this post) for my football uniform. :P I can't help out much if at all, but good luck on the project!

Oh, and ZA, there are some sports uniforms with numbers on them, including the white baseball uniform which, if I remember, had a mix of a backwards 3 and a 2...? Or was that the Urchins jersey...? Either way, just raising awareness about it.

 

[Zombie Aladdin]

I think I've already identified all of the numerals; I just need to determine their values. This won't be easy unless I can find a series of numerals in order, a math equation, or sale prices (or other things, but I can't think of them at the moment). I've already exhausted possibilities for dates, times, and small lists, all of which are present in the game. However, I will definitely take a look into those jerseys; I have made discoveries in unexpected places. The default shirt at the very beginning of the game, for instance, reads "ika" in hiragana. ("Ika" is the Japanese word for "squid.") Compare the phrase in hiragana (いか) to the shirt:

Clothing is hard to make out for me as it's very small on the screen, and Inklings have a hard time standing still.

 

[Bizzle]

Hello to the forum and to Zombie Aladdin in particular.
I signed up to this board specifically to reply to Zombie Aladdin, and to contribute what I have collected so far. I have been obsessing over the Inkling language a lot for the past few weeks, and spent the past week beginning the laborious process of transcribing every bit of text that I can read across the world of Splatoon. The hope was that I would be able to decrypt the text into something understandable, but like everyone else so far it has remained elusive. Unlike everyone else on this thread (except for Zombie Aladdin), though, I still believe it is not gibberish.

Before I go into my observations, here's the approach I took and what's left to do. I'm not a linguist or cryptographer. I'm just someone that loves puzzles and alphabets. I speak English, Spanish, and Nepali. The signs and billboards throughout the world of Splatoon have been my starting points, with caution signs that have images coupled with words helping to suss out meaning from the text. There are signs that clearly show words for 'fire', 'water', 'caution', 'exit', 'stop', 'building', and others. I'm still in the process of transcribing everything, but the single-player campaign seems like a treasure trove of good examples to start from.

First, what I've observed. I came to these conclusions on my own, though you'll notice there is a lot of overlap with what Zombie Aladdin has found, which I take as a sign that we're on the right track.
1. Some characters seem like they are just flipped or rotated versions of others. I believe that these represent the same sound, or a slightly modified version of a core sound/phoneme. I also believe the reason that Nintendo would do this is because it kind of fits the world that Splatoon takes place in. You'll notice in the single player campaign that nearly all of the level designs have structures, plants, and buildings that are right-side up, upside-down, sideways, and all sorts of orientations, including trains that run on their tracks upside-down with no concern for gravity. Since squids and octopi are aquatic, and up and down are much less clearly defined underwater, perhaps they don't care what direction a letter is facing in order to read it; it all makes sense to them either way.

2. Another reason I believe that the Inklings don't care what orientation their letters are in is because there are several examples of text in-game that are identical except that the characters are flipped around. For example, there are two signs at the south side of Inkopolis that are identical, but one is an upside-down version of the other. On Saltspray Rig and at several points in the single-player campaign, there are caution signs that have an exclamation mark that is sideways, while the rest of the text is not. Other signs nearby also end in an exclamation mark, but it is right-side up.

3. I believe (like Zombie Aladdin) that the Inkling language has a lowercase and uppercase version, and that the lowercase version is the much curvier, less blocky form of the uppercase. Some people in this thread theorized that the curvy text is probably Octarian, but I'm inclined to disagree based on some examples that refute that idea. The most compelling is the billboard for the coffee shop. The coffee shop is located at the northeast side of Inkopolis, and its logo is in the blocky text that I think is upper-case Inkling. That same logo is seen throughout several stages (Arowana Mall, Moray Towers, single-player) on a billboard that starts with the logo and then has a paragraph that is in the curvy writing that I think is lowercase (or perhaps analogous to cursive).

4. Another reason I believe the writing is not complete gibberish, but is decryptable, is because the frequency of characters is not the same for each character. Some symbols are seen over and over and over again, while some are only observable a handful of times. There are also symbols that are doubled, and some that are very likely to be found at the end of a text string. Based on my experience doing anagram puzzles in real-life (for fun), these are all signs of an actual message, and not just a random string of characters. It would be more work for Nintendo to mimic the pattern of a language convincingly than to actually make its own language. I know Zombie Aladdin felt the same way, though s/he took a more analytical approach.

5. The numbers, as Zombie Aladdin pointed out, are definitely limited and seem to be decimal-based (thank goodness). There are some single-player levels where they can be seen in signs that don't appear anywhere else, so I'm hoping that we can sort out digits 6 through 9 soon enough.

6. There are so many characters (even when you break things up into uppercase and lowercase) that there's no way this can be a direct substitution of English, but there are plenty of examples in the game of text that resembles English and makes sense when read as English. In other words, it seems likely that the symbols represent syllables or partial syllables instead of just individual letters.

7. Certain proper nouns (like the Nintendo in the Squid Jump game) seem like characters are an amalgam of two or more characters. Some of the structure reminds me of Devanagiri (the script used in Nepali, Hindi, and Sanskrit), in that some characters look like they're actually a combined form of two core characters. In other words, the symbol for 'ta' and the symbol for 'ra' could be combined to form the symbol for 'tra'. The new 'tra' symbol looks like a 'ra' attached to the 'ta'. From what I've seen so far, this type of combination of characters seems to happen only occasionally, and it seems like it's more common in names than regular text, so it's not clear if this is what's really going on or if it's just a coincidence. I've wondered if this might either be a stylistic choice by Nintendo where they break language rules for names, or if there's a rule about names that is different from regular text. Perhaps it's analogous to the cartouphs used to show names in heiroglyphs, where special rules for text apply for proper nouns only. I'm not too sure about this one, but it's a thought I've had.

Anyway, I'm going to continue working on this myself and hope I can find something out.

tl:dr version: The patterns of the Inkling language are not random and therefore strongly indicate that it can be decrypted. It is probably not gibberish.

 

[aqua46]

I'd agree, Bizzle, that the written language is dechipherable, and characters do blend to create differing sounds/words. I'm no linguist, and I've only been matching letters with syllables offered here and there (mostly through splatfests and the callie/marie video).

But has anyone mentioned the splatfest tee "marshmallow?" it can be deciphered, with the first symbol being M, when paired with the second, makes a "mar" sound. the third symbol, a pronounced "shh." the next two pairings pronouncing "mah," (without the tensing of the jaw... not sure the term, again, not a linguist). two "l"s for the "luh" syllable, and the last symbol pronounced "oh."

But, this is only my guess, since I'm not even a novice. That shirt, the callie/marie music video, and that suspicious plaque behind judd, were the finest examples (to me at least) of a decipherable written language.

 

[MissingNumbers]

that suspicious plaque behind judd

Has literally nobody else noticed that the exact same inscription is adorned on Inkopolis Tower, clear as day?