Inkling: The Language of Splatoon

[Kinkling]

(I don't know is this would help, but) When ever Callie and Marie finish, they say something like "Cho fwahs" I hear The fresh, but not the Stay. Hope this helped!

 

[Poltersquid]

-snip-

regarding the spacing, it is entirely possible that it is still asian-like, take for example this quote from the wikipedia article on japanese punctuation:
"In normal Japanese writing, no spaces are left between words, except if the writing is exclusively in hiragana or katakana (or with little or no kanji), in which case spaces may be required to avoid confusion."
In addition it is also common to use a dot between ambiguous character strings, which inkling might have replaced with a simple space
Regarding the first line of text, this should clear that up:
"A space may be left between the family and given names as well."
If we assume that they consider band names like given and family names, then that matches up, other than the fact that there are 3 words there, not 2.

 

[Le_Dook]

I think we're forgetting one thing. People who glitched outside Inkoplis found the back of the Amiibo box to be parallel to it's real life counterpart apart from the language, which means we have ONE real life counterpart to translate it to. If we can find a picture of a Japanese box we can translate it!

 

[Nickfire47]

Guys! I found the missing thread, while doing the out of bounds glitch in the hub, the back of the amino box is visible, and its written in inkling! We have a direct link between these languages, get deciphering people!

 

[Nickfire47]

I think we're forgetting one thing. People who glitched outside Inkoplis found the back of the Amiibo box to be parallel to it's real life counterpart apart from the language, which means we have ONE real life counterpart to translate it to. If we can find a picture of a Japanese box we can translate it!

Five hour's late I guess, dang it

 

[Joseph Staleknight]

I think we're forgetting one thing. People who glitched outside Inkoplis found the back of the Amiibo box to be parallel to it's real life counterpart apart from the language, which means we have ONE real life counterpart to translate it to. If we can find a picture of a Japanese box we can translate it!

As much as I hate to say it, someone already beat you to the punch:

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/

 

[SquidWaifoos]

Squiddish. (Sounds like a harry potter game)
Inklish (english turns inky)

It's a lot better than "squidgin"

 

[eli]

the back of the amino box is visible, and its written in inkling!

Like Joseph said, I did this a couple of weeks ago. :) Sorry!

Nothing came of it, fyi… unfortunately. :B

 

[Nickfire47]

I think someone should just ask Nintendo, only they really know, I mean it shouldn't be too hard, right, right? This aint gona be easy, is it?

 

[Nickfire47]

I'm starting to feel like Nintendo just wants this kind of internet attention so they made a huge puzzle

 

[NLALEX]

If we ever get an interview with a Splatoon head honcho like Nogami I'll put forward a question about the language, i.e. 'Can it be deciphered? If so, is it based on a real language?' or something to that effect.

 

[Le_Dook]

@eli I knew that someone else would've had the same idea!

 

[PiyozR]

Posting what little more I have now.

Attached is what I've been able to make out in terms of numbers. I've also seen a normal "3" so whatever.

Attached is also the pronunciation of some brand logos seen in Inkopolis and beyond. Sure, it might look like a mouthful to say. Just keep an ear out for how quickly the Inklings speak these words.

Attached is thirdly how to say "dog", "cat", and "bread" from images provided in this thread.

If anyone wants to create some sort of a type face or font or something from the PDF that Joe Staleknight created, that would be the best way to start making all sorts of posters, banners, sigs, avatars, etc.

 

[eli]

If we ever get an interview with a Splatoon head honcho like Nogami

we should totally interview tsubasa sakaguchi. he's a boss.

Attached is also the pronunciation of some brand logos seen in Inkopolis and beyond.

woo, IPA!

If anyone wants to create some sort of a type face or font or something from the PDF that Joe Staleknight created

I had planned on vectorizing the three pages of letters you posted, but it appears Joseph beat me to it! I can put these into a font face, but what should we use for the alphabet? Like, what determines if something is 'A', or 'B', or 'a', etc...?

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

What do the 'R' and 'S' mean, in the variants section?

 

[eli]

Okay, post #2 of the night:

Do we have the 乃 character (pictures below)? Or any of these other ones?

HERE is an Imgur album of a couple screenshots I've taken in-game (single player) recently – do we have all these, too? :) I need to go to bed now, but posting it here just in case anyone else could check.

Not sure if we have the one for 'D' in 'DOG' PiyozR wrote, either (it would be a rotated version of 29).

_____

EDIT: Look good so far…? Please let me know any suggestions/changes/advice, etc.

 

[GrumpyTanner]

I wish they had posted a type of lyrics on the splatfest commercial. Its definatly a speak able language, since the lead and the hooks were repeated. I'd love to figure out the lyrics.

 

[Nickfire47]

I do wonder what the squid sisters are sing as well, the credits song too though, there different words, for a more mellow and has a different meaning I think

 

[Nickfire47]

Posting what little more I have now.

Attached is what I've been able to make out in terms of numbers. I've also seen a normal "3" so whatever.

Attached is also the pronunciation of some brand logos seen in Inkopolis and beyond. Sure, it might look like a mouthful to say. Just keep an ear out for how quickly the Inklings speak these words.

Attached is thirdly how to say "dog", "cat", and "bread" from images provided in this thread.

If anyone wants to create some sort of a type face or font or something from the PDF that Joe Staleknight created, that would be the best way to start making all sorts of posters, banners, sigs, avatars, etc.

So just how close is this to being where I can write in this without confusion?

 

[aggravatedTranscription]

I have some ideas about what to do once we finish everything alphabet and phonetics related. When we get to the word stage for rebuilding the Inkling language, we should use this list of 1000 most used words and translate them first. (unfortunately squid, ink, and fresh are not in the list, but we can add those) For now, I'm going to see if i can arrange the alphabet phonetics-wise, rather than by shape.

 

[Nickfire47]

With the vast number of symbols found, perhaps some are just different ways to write the same symbol