The Fan Language of Splatoon

[EclipseMT]

Why can't I delete my post WAAAAAH

As far as I know, the only way to delete your posts is to message the mods.

 

[Inked Inkling]

Okay, some observations:

While I love the script, I feel that, as a Japanese speaker and keen conlanger, Inkling should be closer to Japanese in terms of words and grammar. Japanese grammar is subject-object-verb whereas English (which I assume you've based your grammar on) is subject-verb-object. There are plenty of great Japanese dictionaries on the internet such as http://www.romajidesu.com/ and http://jisho.org/ that can help you with that. No need to change the orthography though, just do what native Japanese speakers do with English words and choose the closest characters to the pronunciation of the word. Even play around a bit. The word kuruma (car) could be rendered as rukuma or makuru by mixing the syllables. You could even use syllables that are close phonetically- guruma or kuduma. Have fun and stay fresh!

 

[TheEnderFriend]

Okay, some observations:

While I love the script, I feel that, as a Japanese speaker and keen conlanger, Inkling should be closer to Japanese in terms of words and grammar. Japanese grammar is subject-object-verb whereas English (which I assume you've based your grammar on) is subject-verb-object. There are plenty of great Japanese dictionaries on the internet such as http://www.romajidesu.com/ and http://jisho.org/ that can help you with that. No need to change the orthography though, just do what native Japanese speakers do with English words and choose the closest characters to the pronunciation of the word. Even play around a bit. The word kuruma (car) could be rendered as rukuma or makuru by mixing the syllables. You could even use syllables that are close phonetically- guruma or kuduma. Have fun and stay fresh!

I believe the others have stated they want to make it as different from Japanese as possible, but I'm not the others, so I can't speak for them.

 

[EclipseMT]

Okay, some observations:

While I love the script, I feel that, as a Japanese speaker and keen conlanger, Inkling should be closer to Japanese in terms of words and grammar. Japanese grammar is subject-object-verb whereas English (which I assume you've based your grammar on) is subject-verb-object. There are plenty of great Japanese dictionaries on the internet such as http://www.romajidesu.com/ and http://jisho.org/ that can help you with that. No need to change the orthography though, just do what native Japanese speakers do with English words and choose the closest characters to the pronunciation of the word. Even play around a bit. The word kuruma (car) could be rendered as rukuma or makuru by mixing the syllables. You could even use syllables that are close phonetically- guruma or kuduma. Have fun and stay fresh!

I also speak Japanese (I am not a native speaker); many of the Japanese loanwords are of my contribution.

But I, as one of the chief contributors to this project, am not keen on making this a posteriori with significant Japanese influence. Already we have this a priori base while being sensible when using Japanese (and other language) loanwords.

In terms of grammar, I cannot speak for the others. Verbs do not conjugate, and instead verb tense is indicated by particles. The language is designed to be simple to learn by fans of the game, not to be faithful to the game's dialogue (and Japanese origin).

 

[MissingNumbers]

Due to the fact that I needed these words for something, I feel like leaving a few words here.

|žuboi| : Water (this was already there, it's just for reference)
|žeka| : Fire
|kuro| : Air
|kena| : Earth/ground

If I stepped over anyone's toes or if you guys have better suggestions, just let me know.

 

[PiyozR]

I'm sorry for the silence, guys. I've been working day and night on the video lessons with my friend. The layout, pacing, amount of content, and style are something we've been working hard at designing over the last several weeks. Since it's just me and her on this, it may still be a little bit before a demo is done. Trust me, it's going to be cool. You're going to love it!

To ensure your loving of it, here is the latest draft of the script for all the videos! Have a gander at it and tell me what you think. Just note that I typed out the Inkling characters in my document. It doesn't show up in Google Docs, of course. The tentative title for the series is Inkopolis University. I am taking notes from every bad language teacher and educational language video and from every good language teacher and educational language video to produce videos that are 1) engaging to watch, 2) teach something complex like a language effectively even for audiences that may not be linguists in the slightest, and 3) allow us to express our love for Splatoon and Nintendo. Right now, my priorities are the clever use of visual cues to help enforce the vocabulary and grammar in my lessons. I've had to draw some Inklings screwing around in ink as well as pull some clip art and screenshots from wherever I can find them. I'll try to post a demo whenever I can supply one.

In other news, I've made little additions to the PDF here and there without really announcing it. Mainly an endless slew of mistakes and little words that I couldn't believe we never created. Did you know it was two and a half months into our conlang project before we had words for "big" and "small"? For real, though.

Ugh, I can't believe we lost to the Decepticons.

 

[piboy430]

First time posting here. Love the project and the script! I've been following it for around a month now.

Firstly, about the PDF, I've noticed that the character 'žu' is incorrect for the words for water (žubói) and tentacle (nežúzu). Just a mistake in the PDF.

Secondly, with the phrase 'What time is it?', the word after 'si' is misspelled in the transcription (should be óyene: oyi doesn't exist). Also, what DOES that word actually mean, anyway?

In that same area of the PDF, I also have two confusions. Firstly, what does the |šudí| in the age section mean? Is it meant to be the word for year (šidí)? Secondly, which day of the week would you say as |ugaí|? Monday or Sunday? The description is a bit unclear.

Also, are we going to have something that indicates the possessive? Like saying 'the book's words' or 'the ink's colour'?

Right, enough with the questions. If I may, I'll contribute some words:

Nouns:
|eyóme| : Book/Scroll
|eyómezói| : Reader (Is the 'zoi' a seperate word?)
|hážu| : Text
|hážuzói| : Author/Writer
|sakéi| : World
|iyóči| : Life
|kíre| : Hate/Hatred
|máina| : Love/Affection
|maézoi| : Everything

Verbs:
|eyóma| : To Read
|hážie| : To Write
|dížu| : To Hear/To Listen to
|kirá| : To Hate

Adjectives:
|góna| : Same
|beŧú| : Different
|dúyo| : Important
|mašóki| : Unimportant/Trivial
|ayúho| : Available
|mukói| : Unavailable
|šakáne| : Popular
|fení| : Unpopular
|horášu| : Proud
|humírie| : Embarrassed

Misc:
|maé| : Every (Example: |maé nahózu si dúyo| = Every second is important)
|žé| : All/Whole (Example: |žé sakéi si kášino| = The whole world is beautiful)

Once again, really love the project!

 

[EclipseMT]

AFAIC, |zoi| is more or less the equivalent to 「者」 (EDIT: read as "mono") as well as 「さん」 in Japanese. The two terms mean "person" and "Mr./Ms./Mrs." (Japanese nouns do not take gender like how English and German do).

In fact, I wrote the word for Judd by combining |zoi| with the word for "to judge," leading to |Tsubi-zoi| (Mr. Judge, which is essentially a direct translation of 「ジャッジくん」).

 

[MissingNumbers]

Ugh, I can't believe we lost to the Decepticons.

Fool. We can not be terminated by a single blast from your puny weapon.

But in all seriousness, the script is looking pretty good so far.

 

[EclipseMT]

Fool. We can not be terminated by a single blast from your puny weapon.

But in all seriousness, the script is looking pretty good so far.

I don't know what the mojibake was.

 

[MissingNumbers]

I don't know what the mojibake was.

Um...? Sorry, I don't know what this is directed to.

 

[EclipseMT]

Um...? Sorry, I don't know what this is directed to.

All the random characters all over the place.

 

[Inked Inkling]

I believe the others have stated they want to make it as different from Japanese as possible, but I'm not the others, so I can't speak for them.

I also speak Japanese (I am not a native speaker); many of the Japanese loanwords are of my contribution.

But I, as one of the chief contributors to this project, am not keen on making this a posteriori with significant Japanese influence. Already we have this a priori base while being sensible when using Japanese (and other language) loanwords.

In terms of grammar, I cannot speak for the others. Verbs do not conjugate, and instead verb tense is indicated by particles. The language is designed to be simple to learn by fans of the game, not to be faithful to the game's dialogue (and Japanese origin).

Well I can understand your objections to it, coming from a future conlang background myself I sincerely doubt that any language on Earth in over 2000 years time would be intelligible to the modern person, whether their language is English, Japanese or whatever.

 

[EclipseMT]

Well I can understand your objections to it, coming from a future conlang background myself I sincerely doubt that any language on Earth in over 2000 years time would be intelligible to the modern person, whether their language is English, Japanese or whatever.

But deciding which words are loanworded from our languages is, rather, a tricky matter. Exempli gratia, many rail transport terms were loaned from Japanese because I saw the similarities between Tokyo's and Inkopolis's rail transports, and decided to loan from Japanese several rail transport terms (but PiyozR modified a few, and one ended up as a general term).

Other Japanese loanwords are mostly colloquial phrases or terms used frequently in a very informal setting. Besides, any sentient lifeform that has the thought capacity of a human can learn human words via any source.
These same words appear frequently in media (stock phrases, if you could call them that), so naturally........

 

[TheEnderFriend]

So I just noticed that the Inkling Girl's default shirt says "Iru" in the Inkling language. I checked the dictionary to see if Iru was used anywhere. I saw it is used for hello, one of the most simple, common words. So my question is, was this intentional?

 

[PiyozR]

First time posting here. Love the project and the script! I've been following it for around a month now.

Firstly, about the PDF, I've noticed that the character 'žu' is incorrect for the words for water (žubói) and tentacle (nežúzu). Just a mistake in the PDF.

Secondly, with the phrase 'What time is it?', the word after 'si' is misspelled in the transcription (should be óyene: oyi doesn't exist). Also, what DOES that word actually mean, anyway?

In that same area of the PDF, I also have two confusions. Firstly, what does the |šudí| in the age section mean? Is it meant to be the word for year (šidí)? Secondly, which day of the week would you say as |ugaí|? Monday or Sunday? The description is a bit unclear.

Thank you! This sort of feedback is invaluable! I read through this thing again and again, spending entire nights on it. Every time I find more and more mistakes. These ones are fixed.

Within my section on telling time, I say that the Inkling week starts on Monday. So {ugai} is Monday.

Also, are we going to have something that indicates the possessive? Like saying 'the book's words' or 'the ink's colour'?

Inkling doesn't use specific words to express possession. For "my", "your", "his", "her", "its", "our", "their" and the like you simply use the pronoun as a descriptor before the possessed object. I think I have one or two examples in there somewhere. Either way, that's going to be in the videos.

Right, enough with the questions. If I may, I'll contribute some words:
-snip-

I'll take a look through them. I'll add what I think will fit and what doesn't conflict with anything. Thanks for your input!

Once again, really love the project!

I'm glad you like it! We've been working hard on it these last few months. Inkling has been my obsession as of late. It's cut into my social life, free time, and other language studies. Sorta my summer fling.

If you're interested at all, other savvy Splatoon fans have been working on decoding the system of in-game Inkling text. It's pretty interesting stuff, even if it's just a code disguising copy and pasted English or Japanese with a Splatoon make over. Check that out if you have the chance.

So I just noticed that the Inkling Girl's default shirt says "Iru" in the Inkling language. I checked the dictionary to see if Iru was used anywhere. I saw it is used for hello, one of the most simple, common words. So my question is, was this intentional?

Yes.

 

[EclipseMT]

The characters on the basic tee were intentionally designed to look like 「いか」 (squid), however.

SIDE NOTE: When adding words, do not reference internet memes at all.

They are poison.

EDIT: In short, this isn't the language of the Internet nation.

But that would be a nice idea.

 

[theFIZZYnator]

I'm back, woomies! There's a lot of progress done in Inkling.

Also, are we going to have something that indicates the possessive? Like saying 'the book's words' or 'the ink's colour'?

Inkling doesn't use specific words to express possession. For "my", "your", "his", "her", "its", "our", "their" and the like you simply use the pronoun as a descriptor before the possessed object. I think I have one or two examples in there somewhere. Either way, that's going to be in the videos.

I think Inkling should have an equivalent of the Japanese の, as in 僕の (my) or 墨の (the ink's), which changes the previous noun into a possessive.

To ensure your loving of it, here is the latest draft of the script for all the videos! Have a gander at it and tell me what you think.

Nice idea! Though I think you should mention the other simplified stress rule and have some voice samples using said rule. I would be willing to provide said samples; I recently found an Inkling voice tutorial that I could use.

BRB. Gonna add the new words to the dictionary.

EDIT: What's the point of having the second {e} in {uyoseeže} if it's going to be assimilated anyway?
EDIT 2: There's a word for "tentacle" but there aren't words for "arms" or "legs". I guess that would make some sense, but I think even the Inklings would have to differentiate the different limbs too.
EDIT 3: I thought "music" was {diho}, not {diže}.
EDIT 4: {gobi muyo} (Inkstrike) still uses the old usage of j.
EDIT 5: Why doesn't {eeyadu} assimilate the two E's?
EDIT 6: There should be a slang term along the lines of "turn orange" or "become orange" meaning "to lose motivation" or "to despair" because the Inkling letters for {homao} look like a person on all fours.

 

[EclipseMT]

I think Inkling should have an equivalent of the Japanese の, as in 僕の (my) or 墨の (the ink's), which changes the previous noun into a possessive.

Eya? Would that be the possessive particle?

 

[TheEnderFriend]

The characters on the basic tee were intentionally designed to look like「いか」, however.

That actually makes a lot of sense.

SIDE NOTE: When adding words, do not reference internet memes at all.

They are poison.

Awww, not even Woomy?

I do think Woomy should be an exception, though since it's actually in the game.