The Fan Language of Splatoon

[PiyozR]

As always, excellent stuff, @piboy430 ! I corrected the mistakes that you pointed out. Here's the weird thing, the font used in the PDF will sometimes change letters under my nose without me even noticing after I type them. I think that since the font simply replaces various letters (å,¥,Õ,ï and the like) it will automatically capitalize the letter when I start typing, inadvertently changing it to something else (i.e. another Inkling letter). I never noticed for weeks. So I'm still finding characters that I typed correctly but Word thought it was auto-correcting.

Notes on your vocab:
All great, but with Halloween and Christmas, I think I'm going to change it a little. First, {wagu} is a more informal term for a big hangout, a house party, a child's birthday party or a bunch of friends going to a karaoke joint for a night. Not exactly a festival or a holiday. For that, I invented {feči} both as "festival" and "holiday" and also as a word for "festive" (different stress between the two) and {fečikoi} for "celebrate". Second, do you think {atáisefeči} would be like the West's Halloween or more something like China's Mid-Autumn Festival? Something like Thanksgiving, to celebrate a fall harvest? Would Inklings celebrate such a thing? Maybe we should just stick with Halloween. I bet Inklings like dressing up in costumes and eating candy. Third, it's mentioned in Splatoon's campaign that Inklings celebrate "Squidmas" as their form of Christmas.

While I'm thinking about it, the Inkling phrase for "Congratulations!" or its abridged cousin "Congrats!" will be said as {feči!}

In any case, gonna add your vocab tonight!

About your poster:
Your photoshop skills are better than mine! I was hoping people would latch on to this and make a whole bunch of posters, sigs, fan art and stuff. I haven't seen a lot of interest in that. Maybe when we get our Youtube/Reddit/Tumblr/whatever going...

As for creative creations based on our conlang, I did one comic a few months ago in Inkling. I'm working on another one now for NaNoWriMo. It's an eight page diddy about an OC krill dude involved in the old Turf Wars against the Octarians and his life story.

 

[EclipseMT]

You've been following...Oh, sorry, Orks can't speak.

Regardless, I need word constructions for the other end.

 

[Adam.the.Squidder]

Is this an SVO or SOV (as like Japanese) language?

 

[EclipseMT]

Is this an SVO or SOV (as like Japanese) language?

It's SVO, as far as @PiyozR cares. TBH it sounds better as SOV, but this is coming from someone who studied Japanese.

I typically associate SVO with Europe.

 

[piboy430]

Found a whole ink-load of errors in the PDF. Here they are:

p23: {zóito} 'To Punch' should be {zóitokoi}
p23: {zoikói} 'To Poke' should be {zóukoi}
p28: {poyezéni} 'Before the Previous'. The character 'ze' is mistyped as the character 'zi'.
p29: {ženísi} 'Basic'. The character 'si' is mistyped as the character 'se'.
p31: 'Windy' and 'Breezy'. What's up with the weird 'zoi' at the end of these two words? Seems inconsistent...
p32: {wekáiti} 'Sweet'. The character 'we' is mistyped as the character 'wu'.
p33: It's not just on this page, but there are general inconsistencies with the accenting on {séso}. Whilst on p33 the 'se' is accented, on p36 the 'so' is.
p35: {wuíbe} 'Besides'. The character 'i' is mistyped as the character 'u'.
p36: {i koiwái} 'I'm afraid that'. Pronunciation has a space that shouldn't be there (between the 'koi' and 'wai').
p38: The character 'fa' in the number 2508 is mistyped as 'fu'.
p42: {góna kiyóte} 'Equally Strong'. The character 'ki' is mistyped as the character 'ko'.

Also, why do we have the word {úya} to mean 'a little'? All of the words that I've seen (such as uyefuzói and uyešumá) use {uye}, rather than {úya}. Why the difference?

In addition, in light of this concept art, I say that we have a word for 'rabbit' or 'bunny'. How about {riémi}? It's pictographic (or at least, that's how I see it...)

Edit: Here's my new signature! I want others to be encouraged to make Inkling things, so I'm making more of my own!

 

[PiyozR]

Is this an SVO or SOV (as like Japanese) language?

Inkling is SVO but adjectives, adverbs, and adjective/adverb phrases are pretty much a free for all.

@piboy430 : At first, that prefix for "slightly", "a little", "somewhat" is {uya}. When adding vocab, we (you and I and everyone) haven't been consistent with it. For the record, it's {uya}. I'll fix all of them tonight. Along with all the errors that you pointed out. It never ends, does it?

Vocab to add:
To Find
To Search for
To Acquire, Obtain
To Perform, Execute
Some (in quantity)
Some (some person, some object, sometime, someplace)
Rabbit {riémi} (Although I don't see a rabbit in those letters. Just for the record, we should probably maintain pictographic vocab to slang. Inkling is not an officially pictographic language.)

I've been working hard on this comic in Inkling. Just spent all night outlining it. It's going to be joyfully depressing. Sorta MGS meets Splatoon via Pixar.

 

[EclipseMT]

Octoling is SOV. Calamari is right out.

I do not want to incite huge rewritings, but IMO the language sounds natural in SVO.

 

[MissingNumbers]

{bihúyowagu} - Christmas (lit. Winter Party)

BUT WHAT ABOUT SQUIDMAS?

 

[piboy430]

@PiyozR

It never ends, does it?

I can't tell what emotion you're trying to convey through this...

Anyway, just been through the first half of the PDF and, big shock, found a few errors. This should be pretty much all of them, if my search was thorough enough (I had an hour to myself). Here they are:

p11: {maiyoéyu} 'Dog'. The character 'iyo' is mistyped as the character 'iyu'.
p12: {uyoséže} 'Machine'. Is there any reason to include the extra 'e' character in the word? It may be for stress, but surely the accent does that already?
p13: {máme gáize} 'Alcoholic Drink'. The character 'me' is mistyped as the character 'mi'.
p14: {suráže} 'Money'. The character 'že' is mistyped as the character 'ze'.
p16: {šanái} 'Arm'. The word is written 'ša', 'na', 'i', when it should be 'ša', 'nai' (like the word {šanáinu} 'Leg' is.)
p16: {žubéya} 'Rain'. The character 'žu' is mistyped as the character 'žo'.
p17: {kóišu} 'Sibling'. The character 'šu' is mistyped as the character 'su'.
p20: {éyadu} 'To Fall'. Again, like {uyoséže}, do we really need the extra 'e' character?

Also, I'm not sure if I struck a nerve or not with trying to make {riémi} 'rabbit'. You didn't seem very comfortable about putting it in...

Edit: By the way, what exactly is the meaning of {dáoyu}? Is it 'time' or 'hour'?

Edit 2: Oh, and for the record, MissingNumbers:

BUT WHAT ABOUT SQUIDMAS?

Piyoz already mentioned this above:

It's mentioned in Splatoon's campaign that Inklings celebrate "Squidmas" as their form of Christmas.

I assume that this means {bihúyofeči} will instead be used as 'Squidmas'.

 

[EclipseMT]

I honestly think "Squidmas" is just insistent terminology by all but a few Inklings.

Externally, I think that's Nintendo and their religious-reference-censorship policy.

 

[MissingNumbers]

I honestly think "Squidmas" is just insistent terminology by all but a few Inklings.

Well I'm not sure what possible situation will lead them to the name Christ, in any case.

 

[EclipseMT]

Well I'm not sure what possible situation will lead them to the name Christ, in any case.

Does the big N still censor religious references?

 

[PiyozR]

I can't tell what emotion you're trying to convey through this...

Half relief and half frustration. Relief in that someone found those mistakes. Frustration in that there were there in the first place.

I'm going to jump into those errors tonight. As always, thanks for pointing them out!

Also thank you for the vocab suggestions, but I already created those words.

EDIT: for those vocab in the guide with extra {e} letters, those were taken from in-game assets.

In addition, I'm not sure if I struck a nerve or not with trying to make {riémi} 'rabbit'. You didn't seem very comfortable about putting it in...

You didn't strike a nerve. Not at all. "Rabbit" isn't as useful to us as rabbits likely don't exist in the Splatooniverse, but hey, it can't hurt! I mean, rabbits never hurt anybody!

Oh god what have I done...

Edit: By the way, what exactly is the meaning of {dáoyu}? Is it 'time' or 'hour'?

It's the word for "time". The word for "hour" is {dehozu}.

As for "Squidmas", I imagine that Nintendo made that alteration less out of "censoring" out all signs of real world religions (not technically censorship but whatever) but more out of a tireless desire to make the dialogue for fresh~ and funky.

 

[EclipseMT]

Half relief and half frustration. Relief in that someone found those mistakes. Frustration in that there were there in the first place.
You didn't strike a nerve. Not at all. "Rabbit" isn't as useful to us as rabbits likely don't exist in the Splatooniverse, but hey, it can't hurt! I mean, rabbits never hurt anybody!

Don't forget the Rabbit of Caerbannog.

As for "Squidmas", I imagine that Nintendo made that alteration less out of "censoring" out all signs of real world religions (not technically censorship but whatever) but more out of a tireless desire to make the dialogue for fresh~ and funky.

But is it still internally insistent terminology?

 

[PiyozR]

But is it still internally insistent terminology?

This is Nintendo so no.

 

[EclipseMT]

This is Nintendo so no.

So it's not the Inklings in-universe that insist on it called Squidmas?

 

[PiyozR]

So it's not the Inklings in-universe that insist on it called Squidmas?

I mean it's a Nintendo game. Nothing is really consistent or well-established except for Zebes blowing up and the order of Zelda games. But as far as our conlang is concerned, it's one of few aspects of Inkling life that's actually given to us, so we may as well include it.

Wanna make up more Inkling and Octoling holidays? What do you think they'd celebrate? A Zapfish Festival, maybe?

 

[piboy430]

Not holidays, but I have noticed that we don't have words for neither 'either' nor 'neither', so here we are:

{íša} - Either
{íša...fi...} - Either...or...
{kéi} - Neither
{kéi...žofí...} - Neither...nor...

EDIT: Since it's been a while since the last time the PDF was updated on here, could we have another update? An awful lot seems to have changed on it since last time...

 

[EclipseMT]

Wanna make up more Inkling and Octoling holidays? What do you think they'd celebrate? A Zapfish Festival, maybe?

Do their years go by Ages of Doubt/Reclamation/etc.?

Or is it like ours, where a single point represents the beginning of the year cycle, or is it like Japan's, where the years are measured based on the reign of the current monarch (e.g. it is, as of this writing, Heisei 27, meaning 27 years since Emperor Akihito took the throne)?

BTW Heisei is the era name of Akihito, like Showa is for Hirohito, etc.

 

[piboy430]

Or is it like ours, where a single point represents the beginning of the year cycle

I think that the years could go from the Inkling's victory over the Octarians at the end of the Great Turf War. Abbreviations would be B.W. and A.W., for Before War and After War (in Inkling, this could be {póši} and {káiši}, short for the words 'Before Battle' and 'After Battle').

Considering how long ago this was, we could say that the current year would be around 100 to 150 A.W. (based on the quality of this photo compared to the Inkling's current techonology).

On the other hand, we could take the beginning of the established Mollusc Era as our starting point, which given this information (I know it's from a wiki, but it's the best we've got) would place the current year very similar to our own, in the 2000s. An abbreviation for this could be M.E. (in Inkling, {fíka}, short for the words 'Mollusc Era' (see below)).

Speaking of which, let's add a few more relevant pieces of vocab:

{káoda} - Era (shortened from 'long time')
{fíati} - Mollusc (shortened from 'dead snail')