The Fan Language of Splatoon

[RadioactiveMoth]

Very few words and phrases in-game seem to be tied to an in-game entity (e.g. rice, bread, dog, cat, Squid Sisters). For those few, I just copied the letters onto my notes and went from there. Accuracy isn't really important for a fan project. My thinking here is that it's not helpful to create words for Squid Sisters or Inkopolis based on the English names in the North American localization (or the original Japanese for that matter). We should be creating these not with the mindset of the English translations, but by what we imagine the Inklings would call these things.

From this point on, if we want to create more nouns, adjectives, or verbs, we should do it from scratch. I couldn't find any more Inkling nonsense, non-semantic letters in Splatoon that seemed associated with any one thing.

That sounds like a good idea. I think we've made it as accurate to the source material as possible at this point. Now, we just need to make more words, and figure out grammar, syntax, and whatnot.

 

[SirFelix]

I'd like to help out in anyway I can too! This seems like a pretty cool project.

 

[Rizz]

Anyone who would like to contribute can help us make up new words. Basically, all you have to do is choose Inkling letters to make up a word, then check to make sure that those letters haven't been used to create some other word. You can use whatever system you'd like to pick the Inkling letters, whether it's by sound, shape, or just choosing randomly.
Be sure to share it here, so that nobody else mistakenly uses that Inkling word for some other English word.

 

[OctagonalKahn]

Here is an image from the Splatoon Us official tumblr, I don't know if we have the glyphs on the bottom right corner of the image.

 

[Topaz☆]

Here is an image from the Splatoon Us official tumblr, I don't know if we have the glyphs on the bottom right corner of the image.

That's odd... I just looked at the files (inkling 002.jpg) for the Inkling characters, and these seem to be Octarian? Maybe it's a secondary language? I'm not sure...

 

[Joseph Staleknight]

Yeah, it's Ocatarian. Of course, since we're focusing on the Inkling language first we'll just leave those for later.

 

[Pivi]

*failed French class in high school*
*is totally willing to learn how to talk squid*
Lets do it

 

[PiyozR]

Just a heads up: I finished that Squid Sisters comic tonight. I made a new thread for it. All feedback is welcome. It would have been out earlier, but that Splatfest got intense, man. Gonna get the English version up tomorrow.

 

[eli]

FONT IS OUT! Woo! Check out my thread about it here!

http://squidboards.com/threads/inkling-font-download-included.3096/

 

[MissingNumbers]

a guy on youtube (SilverTheHedgehog) had a go at me saying all the "misheard lyrics" and "lyrics translated" videos are official deciphers or the songs. he was acting really annoyed every time i told him the vocals were just jibberish with english and japanese words thrown in.
and then he went on about other jibberish songs which were translated... so irritating and jerky.

Speaking of those songs, I've been getting the crazy idea of somehow building new lyrics out of this fan language and then singing them over instrumentals.
One, to practice my maybe-good-maybe-bad voice, and two, because why not?
(well me not fully understanding how the language works might be a pretty good why not...)

 

[Chocoling]

Speaking of those songs, I've been getting the crazy idea of somehow building new lyrics out of this fan language and then singing them over instrumentals.
One, to practice my maybe-good-maybe-bad voice, and two, because why not?
(well me not fully understanding how the language works might be a pretty good why not...)

I was thinking that would be cool too. Or at least have two people make a talking video using the fanon language.

Unless you find a nice remix or someone who can make a replica instrumental, singing might be hard. (Could try the Plaza song).

 

[MissingNumbers]

I was thinking that would be cool too. Or at least have two people make a talking video using the fanon language.

Unless you find a nice remix or someone who can make a replica instrumental, singing might be hard. (Could try the Plaza song).

Well I can handle the vocals and back track just fine, it's the lyrics themselves that I'd have a problem with taking care of.

 

[Chocoling]

Well I can handle the vocals and back track just fine, it's the lyrics themselves that I'd have a problem with taking care of.

Well you could use the lyrics that the "mishead" videos use, or have a listen yourself and interpret your own.

Alternatively... You could...
Make your own song...

 

[MissingNumbers]

Well you could use the lyrics that the "misheard" videos use, or have a listen yourself and interpret your own.

What I was getting at was creating new, completely different lyrics that actually have a coherent meaning to them and still fits the song's melody, whether they sync up with the original voices or not.

I call this idea crazy because I am by no means a good lyricist in English, much less in an incomplete language I still don't fully grasp the pattern of.

 

[PiyozR]

Creating a song with lyrics is a big task at this stage. I'm not going to tell you not to do it. Perhaps something of a smaller scale? Banners? Cool graphic design? Custom avatars and sigs with our names?

Anyway, my next idea is to make YouTube video lessons of our fanon language. I want to introduce it and then have little lessons lasting a minute or two based on things you'd see in a real-world language textbook. Here's my idea so far:
-Introduction to Inkling + letters
-Lesson One: Starter Phrases, Pronouns, Verbs, and Nouns
-Lesson Two: Prepositions and sentences with prepositional phrases
-Lesson Three: Adjectives and Adverbs
-Lesson Four: Conjunctions and forming compound/complex sentences
-Lesson Five: Questions and Question Particles
-Lesson Six: Honorifics and Numbers
-Lesson Seven: Time (time of day and dates), Negation and Commands
-Lesson Eight: Verb Tense (present progressive, future, past)
-Lesson Nine: Family and Age (maybe???)
-Lesson Ten: More Useful Phrases

Does anyone know anything about video editing and production?

What I want to do then is create a helpful PDF with all the characters, phonetics, words, numbers, and grammar on it that people can download and use on their own. Just one all-inclusive thing. How do you make PDF's?

Before long it will be time that we unleash our work onto the world. I'm putting together a list of websites where we should send our work to spread the word:
-Destructoid
-Kotaku
-Polygon
-Rock, Paper, Shotgun
-Rooster Teeth might get a kick out of it
-The Escapist? Maybe
-Eurogamer
-GoNintendo
-Nintendo Life
-more???

 

[MissingNumbers]

Creating a song with lyrics is a big task at this stage. I'm not going to tell you not to do it. Perhaps something of a smaller scale? Banners? Cool graphic design? Custom avatars and sigs with our names?

I've been doing graphic designs with the Inkling language as of late anyway, so fair enough. I'll even take requests for the sake of it, though I should probablly put that in a different thread.

 

[eli]

-Kotaku

rip

I've been doing graphic designs with the Inkling language as of late

please show me/us! :)

 

[MissingNumbers]

please show me/us! :)

Well alright. Here's something that's part of a side project I'm working on for a squad.

I've been using the handwritten scans for letters for now, mostly because the vectors I used for the top felt too thick in the middle.
It's also sort of been a struggle to get the members to send screenshots, but them's the breaks I guess.

 

[EclipseMT]

I am gonna burst so much into laughter if "jama" becomes the word for "hindrance, nuisance" like it is in Japanese, and maybe if it turns out other words are loaned from Japanese.

I have seen your work, and doesn't it look like it shares phonetic structure with Japanese?

 

[EclipseMT]

Just one all-inclusive thing. How do you make PDF's?

I believe Word can export in PDF form.