The Fan Language of Splatoon

[EclipseMT]

Guys guys let's finish one language before we start another.

I like the idea of different accents, but what the heck is Gladiusburg? Is that mentioned in game?

Gladiusburg is the product of my relatively bad creativity with names and a need for a city to represent this dialect of the West.

Final word: Mere accents or total dialects? Also, is that "n" character a good regional distinction?

 

[PiyozR]

Gladiusburg is the product of my relatively bad creativity with names and a need for a city to represent this dialect of the West.

Final word: Mere accents or total dialects? Also, is that "n" character a good regional distinction?

Well the Squid Sisters come from Calimari County. That's established in the Sunken Scrolls. Let's say that the pronunciation in the guide is the Inkopolis accent, and the accent of Calimari County is that which the Squid Sisters sing. Not sure whether you'd consider them accents or full-on dialects. Sorta depends on geography, which we know nothing about in Splatoon.

Personally, I've seen no real use for an {n} character in Inkling. It doesn't really match the rest of our syllabary (being full syllables with no letters solely for consonants.)

Beyond that, just replace "Gladiusburg" with "Calimari County" and then swap "Calimari County" for "Inkopolis" on Fizzy's diagram. Concerning Octarian, you can see Octarian characters on signs and ads in Inkopolis right next to Inkling characters. Perhaps they're interchangeable? Inunah suggested that Octarian and Inkling are similar to Chinese and Japanese. That's to say that Inkling can replace its letters with Octarian and maintain the semantics and pronunciation much like how Japanese can use Chinese characters mid-sentence.

At this time, I really don't want to start making an Octarian alphabet while we still have so much work ahead of us with this conlang. Some day we'll probably start another thread and tie it together with this thread, but right now, I'm going to worry about the tasks at hand: starting a social media presence and providing educational content to Splatoon fans. Anyway, expect the updated PDF soon.

 

[EclipseMT]

Beyond that, just replace "Gladiusburg" with "Calimari County" and then swap "Calimari County" for "Inkopolis" on Fizzy's diagram.

It's never given in-game whether Inkopolis is the central municipality - the county seat, if you want to go by those terms - of Calamari County or whether Calamari County is a seperate autonomous region (again, the Kanto-Kansai parallels). However, this does confirm that there is a possibility of other "counties" within the country that Inkopolis is in.

Personally, I assume Inkopolis is the county seat of Calamari County.

 

[theFIZZYnator]

Inunah suggested that Octarian and Inkling are similar to Chinese and Japanese. That's to say that Inkling can replace its letters with Octarian and maintain the semantics and pronunciation much like how Japanese can use Chinese characters mid-sentence.

That isn't how Japanese works. Japanese doesn't use Chinese Ideographs and Hiragana Syllabary "interchangeably". There are rules, which if you don't follow you look stupid. Chinese Ideographs stand for a concept. In Chinese, they are assigned to one pronunciation, but in Japanese, there are often multiple pronunciations, many spanning multiple syllables (technically morae). They can be replaced with Hiragana or Katakana, but not the other way around, since Hiragana only indicates pronunciation, and not meaning. And in Chinese, there is no use of syllabaries! Source: native Japanese speaker

 

[EclipseMT]

That isn't how Japanese works. Japanese doesn't use Chinese Ideographs and Hiragana Syllabary "interchangeably". There are rules, which if you don't follow you look stupid. Chinese Ideographs stand for a concept. In Chinese, they are assigned to one pronunciation, but in Japanese, there are often multiple pronunciations, many spanning multiple syllables (technically morae). They can be replaced with Hiragana or Katakana, but not the other way around, since Hiragana only indicates pronunciation, and not meaning. And in Chinese, there is no use of syllabaries! Source: native Japanese speaker

Ateji are a pain in the butt to memorize.

 

[PiyozR]

That isn't how Japanese works. Japanese doesn't use Chinese Ideographs and Hiragana Syllabary "interchangeably". There are rules, which if you don't follow you look stupid. Chinese Ideographs stand for a concept. In Chinese, they are assigned to one pronunciation, but in Japanese, there are often multiple pronunciations, many spanning multiple syllables (technically morae). They can be replaced with Hiragana or Katakana, but not the other way around, since Hiragana only indicates pronunciation, and not meaning. And in Chinese, there is no use of syllabaries! Source: native Japanese speaker

I didn't mean that in exactly that way, but whatever. It was just an example to illustrate the point.

It's never given in-game whether Inkopolis is the central municipality - the county seat, if you want to go by those terms - of Calamari County or whether Calamari County is a seperate autonomous region (again, the Kanto-Kansai parallels). However, this does confirm that there is a possibility of other "counties" within the country that Inkopolis is in.

Personally, I assume Inkopolis is the county seat of Calamari County.

Nintendo's lack of world building makes judging such things impossible. For simplicity's sake, I'm just going to assume that Inkopolis and Calamari County aren't immediately the same place. If Inkopolis is to Calamari County as Chicago is to Illinois, then there's still plenty of space for Callie and Marie to be country girls rising to stardom from the verdant pastures of whatever post-human Earth looks like.

 

[EclipseMT]

There is a rural portion in the Kanto region (the one in real life, for all you Pokémon fans).

It essentially is Gunma, Tochigi, Ibaraki, and some outlying parts of Chiba.

Heck, far western Tokyo Prefecture isn't really as urbanized compared to closer downtown.

EDIT: But are Callie and Marie really from rural lands? Several counties in the U.S. are entirely urban land.

 

[EclipseMT]

@theFIZZYnator The dialect/language relation chart use New Rodin or a clone of said font?

I take a lot of attention to detail as well.

 

[EclipseMT]

And if you're wondering why I suggested the |n| glyph, that was because Japanese has their characters built on a similar principle, and include an "n" character.

Unless there is to be an |an|, |en|, |in|......and 43 other characters with |n| at the end.

It still can be a feature that occured frequently in West-speech, but never in East-tongue.

EDIT: I can still use that |n| glyph to set the characters of our fan Inkling to actual written Japanese.

The spare characters (|bai|, |oya|, |pie|, etc.) can be mapped as katakana (to their closest sound). Characters that sound like onyomi readings will be mapped to the most common kanji used for that reading (e.g. |kai| would be mapped to 「回」, |gai| probably to 「外」, |rai| to 「来」, etc.).

I might copy-paste the onyomi characters to other kanji which I know have the same onyomi: 「雷」 as another |rai|.

OTHER EDIT: God damn it, youon. Need to rep small "ya," "yu," and "yo" in some way for both hiragana and katakana.

In terms of lengthened vowels, I might represent them with a very compressed u to the right of the character. Ditto for onyomi with "n" at the end.

So this concludes my plans for the Inkling Script: Japanese Language Mode.

 

[theFIZZYnator]

Friendly reminder that we're not striving to make a clone of Japanese.

@theFIZZYnator The dialect/language relation chart use New Rodin or a clone of said font?

I take a lot of attention to detail as well.

Yes, that's New Rodin. And yes, you do take a lot of attention to detail as well.

The spare characters (|bai|, |oya|, |pie|, etc.) can be mapped as katakana (to their closest sound). Characters that sound like onyomi readings will be mapped to the most common kanji used for that reading (e.g. |kai| would be mapped to 「回」, |gai| probably to 「外」, |rai| to 「来」, etc.).

Might I suggest 倍 for bai and 親 for oya?

 

[EclipseMT]

Might I suggest 倍 for bai and 親 for oya?

"bai:" How. Did. I. Not. Remember. That. Was common onyomi.

"oya:" Perhaps kunyomi can be subbed in if there is no common onyomi for said kanji.

EDIT: As for New Rodin, Nintendo (along with other Japanese game developers) are notorious for using fonts from LETS (an acronym for Leading Edge Type Solution). Problem? None of their fonts are on perpetual license, so I can buy them and not worry about them being off my computer the next year.

 

[theFIZZYnator]

And if you're wondering why I suggested the |n| glyph, that was because Japanese has their characters built on a similar principle, and include an "n" character.

Unless there is to be an |an|, |en|, |in|......and 43 other characters with |n| at the end.

It still can be a feature that occured frequently in West-speech, but never in East-tongue.

What I suggest is to have the West (Gladiusburg) pronounce |*ai|, |*oi|, and |*ie| differently than the East (Inkopolis). Maybe we could assign them the German äi, öi, and üe, respectively? And yes, the standalone N mora could be a good addition for transcribing Japanese, but pretty useless outside of that. I suggest the 王 shape (rotated |noi|) for the moraic N, since that is already supported in all my fonts (if I recall).

 

[EclipseMT]

|*ie| can be weakened to palatalized *a, e.g. |pie| becomes |pya|.

|*oi| can become |*on|.

 

[calthax]

Been watching this thread for a while now. Thought I'd contribute with some vocab suggestions.

We need words for:
Guide
Favorite (Suggested: poboi)
Serve (As in to be of service to someone/thing) (Suggested: eiya)
Servant (Suggested: eiya-zoi)
Wound (Verb)
Wound (Noun)
Game/Competition
Hunger (Suggested: bifu)
Eat (Suggested: jiede bifu)
Game (As in large game or small game; hunting terms)
Holiday/Celebration (Suggested: beota daoyu)
Skin (Noun) (Suggested: oime)
Skin (Verb, synonymous with flay) (Suggested: jiede oime)
Leviathan (Suggested: eyuoeya. Inkling's first homophone?)
Whip (Noun) (Suggested: zazi)
Whip (Verb)
Sandstorm (Suggested: darude)
Remove/Subtract (Suggested: jiede)
Zapfish (Suggested: raikuzoi)
Fish (Suggested: zoi) (Another homophone. Could also mean "person" or "creature")
Zap/Electricity/Lightning (raiku)

Suggested Weapon Names, for consistency:
Killer Wail (ŧuko-wa eyuoeya)

I think the reason why he dislikes the sandstorm idea because Darude - Sandstorm is a famous meme.

 

[MissingNumbers]

I think the reason why he dislikes the sandstorm idea because Darude - Sandstorm is a famous meme.

Pretty sure that was the joke...

 

[theFIZZYnator]

|*ie| can be weakened to palatalized *a, e.g. |pie| becomes |pya|. |*oi| can become |*on|.

I think |*oi| could be weakened from /oi/ to /əi/, in a similar vein to the English word "know"'s pronunciation changing between US English /noʊ̯/ and UK English /nəʊ̯/. |*ai| could change its pronunciation to /ɛi/ (between "ay" and "eye" in US English; "ay" in UK English).

Overview of suggestion: |*ai| |*oi| |*ie| -> /*ɛi/ /*əi/ /*ʲa/

 

[EclipseMT]

|zoi| becomes |zon|.

|noi| is mutated as stated.

Also, weird thought of mine: |n| is an allophone of |i| after |de| in the west.

 

[theFIZZYnator]

|zoi| becomes |zon|.

|noi| is mutated as stated.

Also, weird thought of mine: |n| is an allophone of |i| after |de| in the west.

I think you should also consider a Spanish ñ like "zoñ" and "noñ"

 

[EclipseMT]

So I have been working on my Mode of Japanese for the Inkling script (colloquially known as "Ika-moji: Nihon-kaki-mode" in this case.

I will publish the final chart once I have finished it. So far I have adopted hiragana, including youon and rendaku. However, doing this, I noticed something.

There isn't enough characters to allocate them to both hiragana and katakana (including rendaku and youon) without constructing new glyphs (I already did one for hiragana yo).

I had to allocate |fi| to hiragana hi, and all the katakana are allocated to characters with funny, non-Japanese pronounciations, adopted from a list of unused characters (that exist in-game), or constructed entirely.

Another segment of characters are constructed out of respect to the characters with onyomi-like readings: the Special Characters. These are used like kanji where the appropriate character is subbed in for the kanji with the respective reading i.e. 回 (kai) would use the character for |kai|. In the case of kunyomi, the kanji's most common onyomi would provide the character reading, so for example, 大きい (ookii) would be written as |taikii| in this mode, as 大 is read as "tai" in onyomi (The most common reading is actually "dai," but I might construct a character for "dai," being a common onyomi reading).

And yes, characters with the same onyomi will use the same associated character.

 

[EclipseMT]

Worked on Nihon-mode a bit, specified katakana minus youon and rendaku, as well as some special characters.

First preview.

EDIT: Characters in ka row were actually intended for a.