Inkling: The Language of Splatoon

[SalsaSavant]

You know, Inkopolis is at least partially based on Tokyo. In JP, you see a lot of English. Maybe there's an English equivalent language and a JP one?
Maybe more.

 

[Howl]

"Inklanese" i can't, such an ugly word lmao

 

[eli]

"Inklanese" i can't, such an ugly word lmao

Good thing it's not actually called that.

I wouldn't be surprised if they just used random glyphs there that look like "Nintendo" that aren't the same as all the rest. Note you also see the И in the in-game amiibo box, on the speech bubble on the left, as I mentioned above. It's followed by a glyph that looks like ㅏ, so if there is some sort of correspondence to English, it'd be a two letter word starting with "N" – the only choice being "no" – which doesn't make much sense…

Relatedly, the first word on the left-hand side in the logo of the minigame (included in misc.png in my first post) is pretty reminiscent of the katakana イカ, though, which means "squid." Couldn't figure out how the right side meant "jump" though…

 

[Endymion]

Well if anyone would like to take the challenge to translate the Inklish Alphabet do so now because if not then I shall go for it.

 

[eli]

Well if anyone would like to take the challenge to translate the Inklish Alphabet do so now because if not then I shall go for it.

?????

I've been trying to do this for multiple hours today and yesterday (along with a bit when the game was first announced last June). The past couple posts have been about exactly this, including my first one which explicitly says "If anyone has ideas, please feel free to help out."

So go for it.

 

[Yacker]

Good thing it's not actually called that.

I wouldn't be surprised if they just used random glyphs there that look like "Nintendo" that aren't the same as all the rest. Note you also see the И in the in-game amiibo box, on the speech bubble on the left, as I mentioned above. It's followed by a glyph that looks like ㅏ, so if there is some sort of correspondence to English, it'd be a two letter word starting with "N" – the only choice being "no" – which doesn't make much sense…

To me it looks like that box is japanese-oriented. As to why they would use one of the roman letters is beyond me. However, it appears to be possible that it's actually a part of the word below, as there wouldn't be enough room for both chunks of text on the same line, and when you add them together you get 11 letters, 1 more than the amount in the last word on the japanese text bubble. Seeing as they've combined letters in the Nintendo, I wouldn't put it past them to split them too. However, we'll probably need to translate simpler words that we know what they are before we can do larger words like this.

 

[Terabyte]

I would love to be able to understand Inkling, read Inkling, speak Inkling, and be Inkling.

 

[Turnip]

Actually, I've noticed that the script looks very similar to/based on Japanese katakana symbols.

For example:

This looks like it could read as アイドル　テレ (Idol TV)

 

[Kimmorz]

I've been wondering about their language as well! There are those "Hello my name is" stickers all over in the game, but unfortunately only the hello is visible (rest of the letters are a bit too small to break down). It'd be really nice to know more about the language.

 

[spiffy]

as a language nerd i'm totally in love with this thread. a lot of you have definitely made great contributions. i definitely need to brush up on my japanese to see if it'll come up in handy at all. *rolls up sleeves*

 

[missingno]

Regarding the spoken language, I'm damn sure the credits starts with "Do you really know how little it means? You wanted me to..." (and then I can't make out the rest.

 

[eli]

アイドル　テレ (Idol TV)

Noticed the テレ but not the アイドル. Cool. :)

_____

I think if anyone sees anything in the image I linked in my first post – http://i.imgur.com/hVbzk0F.png – that'd be some great information… unfortunately (and probably, at this point) it may only lead to a dead end.

 

[spiffy]

Actually, I've noticed that the script looks very similar to/based on Japanese katakana symbols.

For example:

This looks like it could read as アイドル　テレ (Idol TV)

oh my god, i knew this was katakana but i couldn't make out anything besides the レ and actually thought the ル was a ス.

 

[yokokazuo]

I thought the last symbol looked more like ヒ, but it would make sense if that said idol tele (although I think テレビ would be better) I'm not fluent in Japanese, but I dont remember hearing anyone say テレ for TV.

Also I'm starting to wonder if they just made up some of the symbols and had some based off of English and Japanese. With the back of the amiibo box, when comparing some symbols to the hiragana/katakana on the Japanese box they don't match up.

However I've been looking at the shops and I've just noticed that here seems to be some similarities to the alphabet.

 

[yokokazuo]

Didn't mean to post that already...
But anyways here are some pictures
The hat shop in Japanese is called サス・オ・ボン (sasu o bon) while it doesn't completely match up, if the writing was based off the romaji of the shop names then it looks like a backwards S/Z could be an S from the alphabet. And the backwards N could be the letter N. The O in "bon" doesn't match up with what would be the O in the middle though.

But also going by the shoe shop, it looks like the first S from "Ebisu Shoes" would be in the same place.

 

[RadioactiveMoth]

This is all really good. I was thinking about the language since day one of the game, so I'm going to try and compile every character I can find in the game. I'll come back with my results later. Might be a while though.

Edit: Right away I have found a problem. The sign by Callie and Marie's studio that should say "On Air" has an 'r' in it. But, the logo for the "Squid Research Lab" also has an 'r' in it. But they don't have any repeating characters. "Research" also has two 'r's' in it, but there aren't two of the same character in the Inkling word. Either we don't have the right translation, or one of them isn't canon. (Most likely the Squid Research Lab, as it was from the direct and the Japanese twitter.)

 

[eli]

really don't think the squid research lab text is the same as the rest of it. looks very different, too.

also, that sign doesn't necessarily say "on air" - just looks like it. it's also likely they just did that bit for fun.

 

[Exor]

Does the SRL look like it's based on Cyrillic (Russian) where the other examples are more or less Japanese to you? Might be another localization style?

 

[RadioactiveMoth]

Does the SRL look like it's based on Cyrillic (Russian) where the other examples are more or less Japanese to you? Might be another localization style?

....huh? I'm really confused by this sentence.

 

[RadioactiveMoth]

Okay, so I went around Inkopolis and the sunken scrolls and found a TON of characters. Way more than needed for the English alphabet. I'm doing more compiling to find every one off of my notes, but I wanted to share this,

See that poster?

Those symbols in black, under the inkling girl, are not seen anywhere else as far as I know. They remind me of Kanji. If it is like Kanji, and there's characters for words, then the language is based on Japanese. However, since I found so many characters, There could be two languages, one for English, one for Japanese. Any thoughts?

Edit: Compiled all the character I found. There are a total of 97 unique characters. That is way too much for a language. I think that there might be no real language, and that it's just made up.