The Fan Language of Splatoon

[SyMag]

Yes, that outline looks really nice! To be honest, I'm not sure we could really spread out the content of our conlang that thin. I mean, there's very little to say about each verb tense (unless you want to go and write more example sentences) to merit individual sections.

I mean the sample sentences aren't overwhelmingly difficult, so if that's what we would need then yeah I'll throw some together. They would just be short sentences like "She is playing Squid Jump." or "My roller is green." Sentences like that just to show off the grammar/vocabulary of a given section.

Now explain to me your version of the outline. Each vocabulary topic is matched with a grammar subject?

 

[PiyozR]

Now explain to me your version of the outline. Each vocabulary topic is matched with a grammar subject?

Exactly. In my version, there are eight sections each containing two lessons. The Turf Wars and the Subject Pronouns is one lesson and the Urban Living vocab and Prepostions are a second lesson. Together, they form Section One which will be given some arbitrary title like "Arriving in Inkopolis". When I get the chance, I will update this post with a full detail of the outline. I will be gone this weekend so hang tight. Also the fifth video lesson is coming very soon.

 

[SyMag]

Exactly. In my version, there are eight sections each containing two lessons. The Turf Wars and the Subject Pronouns is one lesson and the Urban Living vocab and Prepostions are a second lesson. Together, they form Section One which will be given some arbitrary title like "Arriving in Inkopolis". When I get the chance, I will update this post with a full detail of the outline. I will be gone this weekend so hang tight. Also the fifth video lesson is coming very soon.

That sounds fine with me, though I believe some sections like numbers and telling time should be earlier in the list than where they're at now. But we'll about that when you return

 

[PiyozR]

Alright I was able to sneak away for an hour to leech from some neighbor's wifi! In the spoiler is my full idea for the layout of the PDF.

Spoiler: PDF v2?

"Unit Title"
Lesson Vocabulary
Lesson Grammar

-Introduction
-Pronunciation Guide
-Alphabet
-Unit 1: "Life in Inkopolis"
L1A - Turf Wars
L1B - Subject Pronouns
L2A - Urban Living
L2B - Prepositions

-Unit 2: "Meet the Inklings"
L3A - Family
L3B - Conjunctions
L4A - People
L4B - Formalities

-Unit 3: "Staying Fresh~!"
L4A - Starter Verbs
L4B - Verb Tense
L5A - Basic Descriptors
L5B - Possessive Particle

-Unit 4: "Being Social"
L6A - Shooting the Breeze
L6B - Questions
L7A - Numbers
L7B - Geometry

-Unit 5: "Out to Lunch"
L8A - Food
L8B - Imperatives
L9A - Colors
L9B - Comparisons

-Unit 6: "Afternoon Plans"
L10A - Sundries and Hobbies
L10B - Negation
L11A - Time
L11B - Time, Date, and Age

-Unit 7 "The Natural World"
L12A - Weather and Geography
L12B - Demonstratives
L13A - Animals
L13B - Interjections

-Unit 8 "Hard Science"
L14A - Science and Anatomy
L14B - Possessive
L15A - Derived Verbs
L15B - Suffixes

-Helpful Phrases
-Splatoon Maps
-Idioms
-Signatures
-Sample Sentences
-Dialects
-Translations

In other news, the fifth IU video lesson is ready!

 

[SyMag]

Now THAT is an outline I can get behind! What's everyone else think?

 

[Joseph Staleknight]

Looks good! I can easily see this becoming structured like a Teach Yourself book.

Anyway, I noticed in the videos that the black-ish Inkling text doesn't really stand out that much from the dark parts of the background. That should be fixed so that it's easier to read.

 

[Vylion]

I'm kinda at a crossroads here. I used Sunken Sans for Arowana Sans, so I want to use Sunken Sans Bold for Arowana Sans Bold to keep consistence. It also looks marginally more professional than Inkling Regular (Inkling Regular has many "almost-straight lines but slightly tilted"). Also, if you put Sunken Sans, Sunken Sans Bold and Inkling Regular side by side, the last one has a different height and it's a bit jarring, and I don't know how/don't want to fix that for every character possible. However, Inkling Regular is more consistent than Sunken Sans Bold; for example, the latter has a simplified "rai" character, which substitutes the "R" half of the glyph with just a straight vertical bold line (so it's like a capital tilted lambda letter and a capital i/iota letter together). And Inkling Regular is the one used in the current PDF guide.

What do?

Edit: well, indecisive as I am, I decided to do both. Arowana Sans Bold uses Sunken Sans Bold, for consistency, and Bluegill Sans Bold (another fish species name, starting with a 'B' - do you see the pattern?) uses Inkling Regular. Choose whatever you prefer.

Edit 2: Turns out FontForge believes that Inkling Regular characters are full of errors. Luckily it has an automatic fix button, but I have to click it case by case. It'll take a while.

Edit 3: I'm adding links to the fonts in my signature, as well as my Inkling name in Inkling as a way to test out the fonts and see if they're installed properly.

 

[SyMag]

Anyway, I noticed in the videos that the black-ish Inkling text doesn't really stand out that much from the dark parts of the background. That should be fixed so that it's easier to read.

I keep forgetting to bring that up! But I agree, I think the text should be white/some other easy-to-read color

 

[PiyozR]

Whew! Now that all that IRL business is dealt with, I may be able to get back to this conlang guide! Right now I am adding in all the notation above all the vocab in the different categories of the revamped guide. When this is done, I will type in the Inkling characters in bolded Arowana Sans, insert them in the PDF alongside the proper grammar sections, and then just format the whole thing to look nice. This is likely going to take a very long time. I'll try to attach samples to new posts in this thread to keep everyone apprised about my progress.

@Joseph Staleknight I did notice that about the videos. I am talking to the editor of the videos about using Arowana Sans instead of your vector art characters. That way he can change the color of the text as needed. As it stands now, the Inkling text is still legible as the background is black while the characters are merely gray. They're close but you can still read them.

The next lesson of Inkopolis University is in the works right now. It's just that me and the editor are squealing over the new Legend of Zelda footage and can't really focus atm.

 

[SyMag]

I can't hear you over my screaming about a Waluigi amiibo, speak up

 

[Vylion]

Guys, I've added ŧ and ccaron support to the Inkling fonts. You can redownload and reinstall them if you're interested. Link's in the signature. I've also finally finished Bluegill Bold. It's up to you to choose now, Piyoz.

Click "Inkling fonts" to see them all.

Nothing like finals to get productive with things that aren't rellated to your studies.

 

[xadrezo]

I'd like to give some feedback about the fonts:

• "fa" and "fu" are flipped in both fonts
• It is not possible to write three-letter syllables when preceded by an apostrophe ("'iyo" is rendered as "i y o", "'ise" is rendered as "i se" etc.)
• The syllable characters' baseline is lower than the other letters' in Bluegill Sans.

Those are the three things what irked me the most when testing them. Other than that, I like it that they are so easy to use.

 

[PiyozR]

"fa" and "fu" are flipped in both fonts

Oh my cod I didn't even notice and I've typed out several pages of Inkling text. @Vylion just double-check the characters in your fonts and I will try them all out in the PDF and decide from there.

EDIT: I'm gonna attach what I have of the revamped guide. I have all the grammar sections in place minus one. I am going to start adding in the vocabulary sections once I decide on a (corrected) font from Vylion.

 

[Vylion]

Yo, the guide is looking nice.

I'd like to give some feedback about the fonts:

• "fa" and "fu" are flipped in both fonts

WOOPS. I'll try to see if I can correct it this afternoon.

• It is not possible to write three-letter syllables when preceded by an apostrophe ("'iyo" is rendered as "i y o", "'ise" is rendered as "i se" etc.)

That's the mechanism I introduced so you could type {ba}{i} without it becoming {bai}, but now I see the problem of using such a common non-alphanumeric character. Suggestions to replace the apostrophe?

Speaking of which, I just spotted "anéna" in the guide written as {ane}{na} instead of {a}{ne}{na}...

• The syllable characters' baseline is lower than the other letters' in Bluegill Sans.

I know, that was among the reasons that made me not able to decide which font to use for a bold version. I don't have time to fix it right now since I'd have to go letter by letter, but this summer I'll have plenty of time.

@PiyozR if you reinstall the font after it gets fixed, it will automatically correct itself on the document (installing a font you already have installed overwrites the previous version), although you will have to re-render the PDF (there's some font-embedding-thingy that goes on when rendering PDFs, right?)

Edit: Okay, 'fa' and 'fu' seem to be fixed in both Arowana fonts. I've already reuploaded them to my drive; the download links are the same. Bluegill will have to wait for when I fix the rest of the font.

 

[xadrezo]

That's the mechanism I introduced so you could type {ba}{i} without it becoming {bai}, but now I see the problem of using such a common non-alphanumeric character. Suggestions to replace the apostrophe?

The problem I'm having is this:
Suppose I want to write the word {bo}{iyo}. Typing boiyo results in {boi}{y}{o}, Typing bo'iyo results in {bo}{i}{y}{o}. What should I do?

Edit: Okay, 'fa' and 'fu' seem to be fixed in both Arowana fonts. I've already reuploaded them to my drive; the download links are the same. Bluegill will have to wait for when I fix the rest of the font.

For me, Arowana Sans Bold is fixed, but the standard one is not. Atiyoka runai toya.

 

[Vylion]

The problem I'm having is this:
Suppose I want to write the word {bo}{iyo}. Typing boiyo results in {boi}{y}{o}, Typing bo'iyo results in {bo}{i}{y}{o}. What should I do?


For me, Arowana Sans Bold is fixed, but the standard one is not. Atiyoka runai toya.

Oh. Oooooh. Now I see the problem. As soon as I have time I'll try to incorporate the apostrophe into the XyX ligatures too, and see if that fixes the issue.

Also I zipped the wrong Arowana Sans Regular, but I don't have access to the drive it's stored in at the moment. I'll try to reupload it as soon as I can.

 

[PiyozR]

Info on the PDF revamp will be coming soon. Here's the sixth lesson of Inkopolis University!

 

[Jonathx]

I'm back and working on improving the encoding specification doc. I've done some general clean-up stuff, like using ArowanaSansBold instead of the raster (pixellated) versions I clipped from the guide for previous versions, but also started to add associations (alternate transcriptions, meanings in other scripts 'unified' with the main one, other characters that look similar, etc.) under each character like would be in an actual Unicode code chart. My current iteration is attached.

Now, since I looked at the Calamari Section to add associations, I finally know what people were referring to with the Calamari N character. Since all other characters are unified with "schoolhouse" inkling, and it seems kinda silly to (edit) add a whole new block for 1 character (/edit) I'd like to slot it in "naturally" to the script based on the in-universe "history" of the character. Would an archaic character it was based on have fit into the established pattern of other inkling characters?

For example, what if it was based on archaic character {nie} which was dropped from the script because modern inkling words rarely use it, but re-purposed in Calamari region as just the initial {n}. Or maybe it was {ani} but it morphed over time to sound the same as Schoolhouse {ane}/Calamari {an} leading it to be re-purposed as {n} in Calamari, but dropped altogether in Schoolhouse. This is basically how Unicode saved itself from having to encode the differences between the traditional Chinese, simplified Chinese, Japanese, and Korean versions of Han characters as four separate scripts: they found which characters USED to be the same and merged them, letting the font deal with which version to display.

Also, while most of the VyV disyllables are either explicitly dropped or morphed to yV in Calamari, the fate of {ayo} is not specifically addressed. Since there's already a {yo} I'd assume it's just dropped like most the redundant ones, but I want to be sure before I inked it in. Especially since there's no {yi} and {uya} set a precedent by it's change to {ye} that they don't necessarily have to end in the same vowel in Calamari as they do in schoolhouse.

 

[PiyozR]

And here we are! After several weeks of organization, typing, formatting and reworking, the Official PiyozR Inkling Conlang Guide is ready! Everyone's advice on revamping the PDF have been taken into account. Somehow there are eighty-seven pages of content in our conlang! I attached what I have now. Everyone who follows this thread should take a peek at it and tell me what you think. I am going to update the PDF on the hub page right now, too.

The seventh video lesson should be good to go soon.

 

[SyMag]

And here we are! After several weeks of organization, typing, formatting and reworking, the Official PiyozR Inkling Conlang Guide is ready! Everyone's advice on revamping the PDF have been taken into account. Somehow there are eighty-seven pages of content in our conlang! I attached what I have now. Everyone who follows this thread should take a peek at it and tell me what you think. I am going to update the PDF on the hub page right now, too.

The seventh video lesson should be good to go soon.

YES. This is MUCH better! Definitely feels more like you're taking a class on this material. Great job guys :D

-Sylag ;p