Inkling: The Language of Splatoon

[extremechiton]

I would believe molluskese or molluskan would he the language spoken by all, or at least the base language
(Like latin is the base for English, spanish, french etc.)
And inklish is a mixture of words/ grammar tyat involves both inklings and octarians (like spanglish)
And squiddish is a dialect only spoken by inklings (especially in squid form
While octarians speak the dialect of octon

 

[Naouak]

It seems to me that their alphabet is near roman alphabet but their orthograph of the words change from ours.

For example with the Squid research lab logo :

I can only make 6 character out of the "research" part but in english it has 8 letters.
Research and Lab contains both a "a" but there is no two same chars.

I think it is wirtten "Sqihd R*arch Lob" which seems to be a phonetic way to say "Squid Research Lab". I think Inkling is loosely based upon what they grabbed from human culture.

 

[ndayadn]

Squid Research Lab actually seems to read more like:

Scquihd R__rchk Loob
I am unsure what the "m" and upside down "u" are supposed to sound like.

My thoughts are that the characters, at least in an English context combine multiple English characters to create phonetic sounds familiar to ours.

The fusion of "c" and "q" in "Scquihd" for example could denote that it is a "cqu" sound. In the same word you can clearly see that u, i, and h are all combined to create basically one sound (weh).

In Lab I think the double-o looking character could just denote a long "a" sound (you can also notice it connects to a "b" looking character).

 

[yokokazuo]

I asked my Japanese friend if they heard anything in the Squid girl's song, but he didn't hear any Japanese.

Also it appears someone has "translated" one of the songs. ;)

 

[Endymion]

I asked my Japanese friend if they heard anything in the Squid girl's song, but he didn't hear any Japanese.

Also it appears someone has "translated" one of the songs. ;)

I've always wondered what goes on inside a crackhead's mind.

 

[WaifuRaccoonBL]

Wait so the language is called Inkling? So they themselves are Inklings that speak inkling? Eh, name could've been better, (like animalese from animal crossing) but it certainly looks interesting. I like how there is even some deciphering going on. :3

 

[Yaezakura]

Wait so the language is called Inkling? So they themselves are Inklings that speak inkling? Eh, name could've been better, (like animalese from animal crossing) but it certainly looks interesting. I like how there is even some deciphering going on. :3

Not exactly unusual for languages. People from England are English, and the language they speak is called English. A lot of languages follow similar trends, with the native word that refers to the language being identical to/slightly modified from the word used to refer to the country/people themselves.

 

[yokokazuo]

I noticed that in the first boss fight there are what looks like Japanese stop signs at the edge of some parts of the stage. The writing even looks similar to the word stop (とまれ)

 

[Nukichuu]

Maybe we find out more about the Language in the sunken scrolls~ (the scrolls contain informations about inklings and other stuff~)

 

[redadil4]

It reminds me of magicka were you can pick out words they say but its more gibberish.

 

[Endymion]

Am I the only one who hears warped japanese when I hear Inklish?

 

[Inari]

Am I the only one who hears warped japanese when I hear Inklish?

I hear it too..

 

[Exor]

I can't be the only nosy person to have actually seen this... can I...? ;)

I can verify that there are at least instances of correctly symbol-swapped English in Inkopolis at the very least. Go check out the studio where Callie and Marie are. There is a red sign there that distinctly reads ON AIR. I'll put the picture up here momentarily.

 

[Pangaea]

I can't be the only nosy person to have actually seen this... can I...? ;)

I can verify that there are at least instances of correctly symbol-swapped English in Inkopolis at the very least. Go check out the studio where Callie and Marie are. There is a red sign there that distinctly reads ON AIR. I'll put the picture up here momentarily.

I saw that too, and my brother agreed that it reads "on air." Also, there is a sign in Inkopolis that for sure has Japanese characters, and there is some text in the city (I forget where) that looks like Arabic to me.

 

[eli]

I imagine the written language is a simple character swap from Japanese.

This is what it looks like to me for a number of reasons. I'll likely post more later when I have some more time to devote to this.

https://mobile.twitter.com/SplatoonJP/status/596962759541063680/photo/1
The written language looks very similar to English and you can kind of read "Splatoon Research Lab".

That text actually looks very different from what appears in game, which is oftentimes more blocky. Again, I plan to post what I have so far, including many pictures, later.

I didn't really hear anything that sounded like Japanese

I did, at least to some extent. Especially in this song: youtu.be/k4k1NdUEUP4 (Boss theme, so spoilers, maybe?)

Am I the only one who hears warped japanese when I hear Inklish?

I hear it too..

Yup.

Research and Lab contains both a "a" but there is no two same chars.

Could be phonetic. (Probably unlikely though…)

Go check out the studio where Callie and Marie are. There is a red sign there that distinctly reads ON AIR

Interesting. I'd assume it's the same in the Japanese version of the game? Japanese does use English pretty extensively (including in the game), so I wouldn't be surprised if the Inkling language has ties to both English and Japanese in terms of transliteration, etc.


____________

The attached file was almost all the text we had seen—in trailers, screenshots, etc.—by June 12, 2014. It's been a LONG TIME since then so I guess I've got some updating/work to do. :)

 

[Ryan Stokes]

I think it is a full language. If Hyrulian could exist then why can't inkling? That and the letters are used so much that it would be simpler to write with a plan not just gibberish. I don't know about the spoken language though

Yeah this is what I was going to say also. Wind waker and twilight princess both had at least text or audio that was gibberish to us but it actually meant something, I'm guessing Nintendo is doing the same here

 

[Amir]

Based on the letters and gibberish I see that the kinda mixed japenese and English together and recreated the letters.

 

[Exor]

Nintendo also did Animal Crossing, though. The gibberish there was constructed with sounds so that it would sound kind of like words and impressively passes some of them off, such as 'thank you' in New Leaf.

As for me, I do hear Japanese bits when the Squid Sisters do their song. This may be a result of Japanese origin and/or a J-Pop reference/nod.

Lastly (for now), it took Nintendo a lot of Zelda games before they made 'functional Hyrulean', so Inkling might not be set in stone just yet.

But, then again, this is Nintendo, and they have been known to put ridiculous amounts of details into things.

 

[eli]

So, I've been trying to figure out the hopefully non-random Inkling alphabet. Most of my ideas & leads so far have proved fruitless.

I compiled this image of the squid girl amiibo box – the Japanese and English versions – and then an in-game picture of it, which seems to be based on the Japanese version.

Looking at the "GEAR GET!" part on the right, some notes:
• The o-with-a-hook character ends the top word and begins the last.
• The "LI" seems to be a single character, and appears in both the top and bottom word.
• The "Иㅏ" appears both in the top word and the left text blurb/speech bubble (last word on first line).

It'd be pretty crazy (i.e. dumb) if words weren't all consistently left-to-right or right-to-left, so I'm assuming it's one of those (probably left-to-right like English and [non-Classical] Japanese).


Not really sure if this image helps or anything, or if it can be "solved" – it may just show the alphabet/writing system is completely arbitrary/random, unfortunately. If anyone has ideas, please feel free to help out.

Attached to this post is my (non-exhaustive) compilation of the in-game brands with their English and Japanese names, along with a couple miscellaneous pictures of translated or maybe-translated text.

_____

EDIT: There's a reddit thread discussing/analyzing this image as well that I just stumbled across: http://www.reddit.com/r/splatoon/comments/38lge0/the_inkling_language_may_sadly_just_be_gibberish/

 

[Yacker]

I had been curious of this myself, and after seeing that "ON AIR" sign I simply had to investigate myself. I do believe I can confirm that the language has english-based origins as well as japanese ones, making it interesting to translate. As I only speak english, I will only be covering what I've found so far for the english-based translations. Take this image.

Taken from the squid jump minigame. At first it just looks like nonsensical jibberish, yeah? But, it in fact reveals that the ON AIR sign above is indeed correct. It spells out Nintendo, complete with lowercase letters. The first letter is obviously an N, which confirms the ON AIR sign above being english. The next was a bit trickier, how ever it appears to be an i and an n fused together to make the in sound. The next was tricky too, however it is clearly a T and an E fused together to make the te sound. As to why these are capitals and the rest aren't I have no idea. The next is obviously an n, and the next obviously a d, and the last one obviously an o. So there certainly is a cohesive language here that we can translate, we just need to figure it out first.