The Fan Language of Splatoon

[MissingNumbers]

We're basically breaking down Splatoon text into different languages and forms.

Just the one language, actually.

 

[theFIZZYnator]

Hi, I'm new here but am really intrigued by conlangs. Do you want me to make that syllabary into a font? It'll be a substandard one for sure, but I'll give it a shot.

EDIT: How could I have forgotten to link to my dafont account? If not, nobody could have known my skill level.

 

[theFIZZYnator]

Another topic, so I'm writing another post for this. I feel like the syllabary needs a major overhaul. There are too many phonemes, and the symbols are scattered without a pattern. For example, in Japanese, we only have base glyphs for 5 vowels and 10 consonants (including "no consonant") and the syllabic N, and the rest are dealt with diacritics (dakuten and handakuten). However, this conlang encompasses every consonant present in the English language. What we have here is more similar to Cherokee than to Japanese.

Problem being there are too many consonants not used in-game. I've taken the Final Boss Theme and transcribed the lyrics, and then analyzed them a bit myself. Here's what I got:

Vowels: There are five, no diphthongs.
Consonants: There are sixteen, ch d f h k m n p r s sh w. This is roughly the same number of consonants as Japanese.
Commonly used words:
hara, ni, nire, hire, yuri, merodi (loanword for "melody"?), shura, re (Note that the spaces are arbitrarily positioned.

This is what I'd like to propose:
A revised syllabary with significantly fewer consonants, like so:

(note: k, m, n, etc. should be linked to ky, my, ny, etc.)

Instead of using dakuten and handakuten, since I know that they don't appear in-game, I suggest using similar shapes like ⊥/上 or コ/∃ -- say ⊥ is pe then 上 is fe, and コ is do then ∃ is cho.

In short, I feel that this conlang is a convincing one, but not very Inkling.

 

[EclipseMT]

Nnnnnn......What a statement.

But I don't know how PiyozR did the phonology. I thought "oye" was atrocious-sounding, as Japanese doesn't have "ye" in its phonetics, but we had to allocate all these glyphs to something.

Loanwords I try to make direct from the Japanese, unless he says otherwise. He did it to "densha" (when I had a last-second correction when at its current state we had no [n] glyph) and "kudari" (that was unnecessary).

TL;DR: We need [n] as a glyph. I mean, I noticed the phonology was similar to Japanese (in terms of the individual sounds), but that was it.

Notes: Y= IPA [j] and J is... the English J sound (I couldn't type IPA - I copy-paste from Wikipedia when I need to).

 

[PiyozR]

Hi, I'm new here but am really intrigued by conlangs. Do you want me to make that syllabary into a font? It'll be a substandard one for sure, but I'll give it a shot.

That would be excellent! Substandard works for me. Anything that would make generating Inkling easier than dragging and dropping PNG's into Word.

Another topic, so I'm writing another post for this. I feel like the syllabary needs a major overhaul. There are too many phonemes, and the symbols are scattered without a pattern. For example, in Japanese, we only have base glyphs for 5 vowels and 10 consonants (including "no consonant") and the syllabic N, and the rest are dealt with diacritics (dakuten and handakuten). However, this conlang encompasses every consonant present in the English language. What we have here is more similar to Cherokee than to Japanese....

What does it matter? Why do the characters need to be assigned phonetics with consistency? (And how does a language have too many phonemes?) I chose phones from the ground up to be inconsistent. I realize that characters like /so/, /sai/, /ʃo/, and /ʃu/ are the same letter flipped in four different ways, while at the same time /pe/and /pu/ can be flipped ninety degrees to represent the same glyphs. Why do some characters get modified to different sounds and some get modified and are still the same sound? Because languages needn't be so orderly. What's the point?

Two months into this, it would be weeks of work to revise the entire syllabary from the ground up and then go and change the entire vocabulary to fit it. It's basically doing the entire project over. We've put a heck of a lot of work into this and I'm personally very proud of the results. A major overhaul would throw all of our hard work away. All the vocabulary, all the grammar, all the art we've made so far.

Seeing as this is a community project, I don't want to turn away any helpful advice or help. But such an overhaul isn't exactly an easy undertaking at this point. I'm open to streamlining our conlang's syllabary in smaller, simpler ways that don't disrupt everything we've established here.

 

[theFIZZYnator]

What does it matter? Why do the characters need to be assigned phonetics with consistency? (And how does a language have too many phonemes?) I chose phones from the ground up to be inconsistent. I realize that characters like /so/, /sai/, /ʃo/, and /ʃu/ are the same letter flipped in four different ways, while at the same time /pe/and /pu/ can be flipped ninety degrees to represent the same glyphs. Why do some characters get modified to different sounds and some get modified and are still the same sound? Because languages needn't be so orderly. What's the point?

Two months into this, it would be weeks of work to revise the entire syllabary from the ground up and then go and change the entire vocabulary to fit it. It's basically doing the entire project over. We've put a heck of a lot of work into this and I'm personally very proud of the results. A major overhaul would throw all of our hard work away. All the vocabulary, all the grammar, all the art we've made so far.

Seeing as this is a community project, I don't want to turn away any helpful advice or help. But such an overhaul isn't exactly an easy undertaking at this point. I'm open to streamlining our conlang's syllabary in smaller, simpler ways that don't disrupt everything we've established here.

Yes, I do admit an entire redo would be excessive work. (Though the grammar can be here to snay!) However, I absolutely must remind you that the current Inkling language would sound nothing like the in-game version. You simply took English phonemes, while what you should have done is take them from Japanese, or listen to in-game recordings like I've done in my post above. I recommend at least cutting down the currently titanic number of consonants to half, 6 consonants max that aren't heard in-game.

I'd like to quickly review the post I made above. Sounds like /dʒ/, /v/, and /ts/ should be abandoned in favor of more "squddy-sounding" ones like /ɾ/, /j/, and /w/. At least that's what the linguists over at Nintendo the Squid Research Lab did. I recommend "flattening" some extraneous consonants into the desirable ones, one by one, making small changes along the way.

 

[EclipseMT]

I'd like to quickly review the post I made above. Sounds like /dʒ/, /v/, and /ts/ should be abandoned in favor of more "squddy-sounding" ones like /ɾ/, /j/, and /w/. At least that's what the linguists over at Nintendo the Squid Research Lab did. I recommend "flattening" some extraneous consonants into the desirable ones, one by one, making small changes along the way.

All these sounds (barring /r/ and /v/) exist in Japanese.

The best I can do is substitute /r/ with the alevolar tap, like Japanese. To approximate it, it's somewhere between an L, an R, and a D in English. Japanese speakers would find this easy to do.

I don't know what to do with /v/, however. In Japanese, that's used only for loanwords, and even then, it is substituted with /b/ most of the time.

 

[calthax]

This is a fan language, not a official language. He stated it's not meant to be a guide to the in-game text.

 

[PiyozR]

Yes, I do admit an entire redo would be excessive work. (Though the grammar can be here to snay!) However, I absolutely must remind you that the current Inkling language would sound nothing like the in-game version. You simply took English phonemes, while what you should have done is take them from Japanese, or listen to in-game recordings like I've done in my post above. I recommend at least cutting down the currently titanic number of consonants to half, 6 consonants max that aren't heard in-game.

It was never meant to be. We knew that from day one. It's not meant to sound like any language fictional or real. Similarities to English and Japanese were designed to make this conlang more accessible to much of the player base of Splatoon.

And, well, if we significantly changed the syllabary, we would have to redo that vocab and grammar from the ground up, too. That's why I'm a little hesitant about such an overhaul. For what we're trying to accomplish, we've got a really darn good conlang. Like I said, I'm open to making changes still.

I'd like to quickly review the post I made above. Sounds like /dʒ/, /v/, and /ts/ should be abandoned in favor of more "squddy-sounding" ones like /ɾ/, /j/, and /w/. At least that's what the linguists over at Nintendo the Squid Research Lab did. I recommend "flattening" some extraneous consonants into the desirable ones, one by one, making small changes along the way.

An alveolar flap is something I can work with as a replacement to an alveolar approximant. That's /ɾ/ instead of /ɹ/. We already have /j/ and /w/ in place. /v/ is a tough one to place for me. We could easily make /v/ and /w/ allophones. Heck /ɾ/ and /ɹ/ could be allophones, too. We'd just need to add a note about that in any instructional material.

Also, could you link me to where the Squid Research Lab did some linguistic work? I typically avoid Tumblr like the plague (for obvious reasons).

 

[EclipseMT]

An alveolar flap is something I can work with as a replacement to an alveolar approximant. That's /ɾ/ instead of /ɹ/. We already have /j/ and /w/ in place. /v/ is a tough one to place for me. We could easily make /v/ and /w/ allophones. Heck /ɾ/ and /ɹ/ could be allophones, too. We'd just need to add a note about that in any instructional material.

Speaking of allophones, how about /h/ becoming /ç/ before /i/ and /j/?

EDIT: And passive tense can be indicated by a particle before other particles.

 

[PiyozR]

Speaking of allophones, how about /h/ becoming /ç/ before /i/ and /j/?

/h/ never appears in front of /i/ or /j/, though. Sorry, what do you mean, exactly?

EDIT: And passive tense can be indicated by a particle before other particles.

Yeah, totally forgot about passive tense. You suggested /gai/ as a particle, right? Right now, we have /gai/ as a particle for talking about the days of the week. What about /ati/? That's barely used. "You were killed by an Octarian" would then be pronounced /pa ati t͡sukoi ɹutu piesuzoi/.

But what about articles?

Sorry, totally forgot to answer this. Inkling as we have it has no articles. I don't see the need, really.

 

[Joseph Staleknight]

Yeah, totally forgot about passive tense. You suggested /gai/ as a particle, right? Right now, we have /gai/ as a particle for talking about the days of the week. What about /ati/? That's barely used. "You were killed by an Octarian" would then be pronounced /pa gai t͡sukoi ɹutu piesuzoi/.

Or rather, /pa ati t͡sukoi ɹutu piesuzo/.

In any case, we definitely need a passive voice to talk about, say, what weapon did you in (e.g. "I was splatted by a Splattershot" would be /i ati beeja ɹutu ojo ped͡ʒie/, assuming "Splattershot" can be written as "normal gun"). At least, it'll help my initial proposal for the word for "eternal" which relied on it (hence, /d͡ʒo[pu]atit͡sukoi/).

 

[EclipseMT]

/h/ never appears in front of /i/ or /j/, though. Sorry, what do you mean, exactly?

That was a feature in Japanese.

Yeah, totally forgot about passive tense. You suggested /gai/ as a particle, right? Right now, we have /gai/ as a particle for talking about the days of the week. What about /ati/? That's barely used. "You were killed by an Octarian" would then be pronounced /pa gai t͡sukoi ɹutu piesuzoi/(sic).

We could do /ati/ as the passive particle. As for articles, Japanese doesn't have them, so............

Need to find out what other particles we need. We have "I can do" as a particle more or less, but is it placed before the root verb, like the passive, past-tense, and (I believe) the future tense? The progressive tense is more or less like the "chuu" suffix in Japanese - placed after the root verb - 「攻撃中」 (kougeki chuu) = "is (in the process of) attacking." It can also be rendered as 「攻撃している」 (kougeki shi-te iru) - and for the passive progressive: 「攻撃されている」 ("kougeki sarete iru" - conjugated form of "kougeki shi-te iru").

Japanese also has conditional conjugations (/u/ becomes /eba/), causative (/u/ becomes /aseru/), and a lot of other verb conjugations based on grammatical voice/etc. Japanese does not conjugate based on grammatical gender (there is no such thing as that in Japanese), grammatical number, and grammatical person like most Western languages.

NOTE: "Kougeki" is a noun. "Kougeki suru" (攻撃する) is base form.

Edited to not get asterisked by censor filter.

 

[theFIZZYnator]

I'm here to propose a transliteration system in hopes of simplifying the language a bit more, and clarifying the pronunciation.
Really. The fake IPA was getting on my nerves. I still can't give up the dakuten idea, so they're notated in blue lines.

In case you can't read the PDF, here are some big changes:

• /tʃ/ becomes Č or just C. Both /tʃ/ and /tɕ/ are acceptable pronunciations.
• /dʒ/ becomes Ž, Zh, or J. It is pronounced any of the following: /ʒ/, /ʑ/, /dʒ/, /dʑ/.
• /ʃ/ becomes Š or Sh. It is pronounced /ɕ/, /ʃ/, or/ʂ/.
• /f/ F and /v/ V are also pronounced /ɸ/ or /β/, respectively. /v/ also has /w/ as a permissible pronunciation, in anticipation of merging into /w/.
• /r/ is pronounced /ɾ/ (flap), /ɻ/ (English R), or /r/ (trill).
• /ai/, /ie/, and /oi/ will be æ, è, and œ, respectively. They will be abolished and merged into e, ye, and i/e.
• /j/ will be notated y.
• NOT IN PDF: /ts/ becomes Ŧ. It will eventually be merged to S or T.

Here is the list of suggested merges: P/B, T/D (Ŧ), Č/Ž, S/Z (Ŧ), V/W, AI -> E, IE -> YE, OI -> I or E. These merges could also just be closely related shapes, though.

All of that will result in this alphabet:

A B ČC D E F G H I K M N O P R S ŠSH T Ŧ U V W Y Z ŽZH J Æ È Œ​

If every suggested merge occurs, it will shorten into AČEFHIKMNOPRSŠTUWYZ.

If this is accepted, we no longer have to copy-paste from Wikipedia or anything, just type normally. We could even switch entirely to this alphabet for a while while we reconstruct the syllabary! Just a crazy thought though. Kinda like abandoning Chu Nom for Latin, or abandoning Chinese ideographs for Hangul.

Sample text:
I šide miboi/čike (duplicate verb? synonyms?) muuyozœ. - I like to speak Inkling.
Pa pu-bihe pèsuzoi da iyeseehu? - Can you see the Octarian on the machine?
Ŧukoi! Doano ayomæ oboi be eya i ki ŧuroži! - Damn it! That girl way over there sniped me!
(I've noticed that ŧu koi (kill) and ŧu ko i (darn it) are homophones.)

Side talk: We need a particle for "language", as in "the English/Japanese language"/「英語・日本語」. We also need a word for "Octoling". I'd also want some interjections.

 

[EclipseMT]

Side talk: We need a particle for "language", as in "the English/Japanese language"/「英語・日本語」. We also need a word for "Octoling". I'd also want some interjections.

As for interjections:

* "Buuu" = an interjection indicating disgust (Whatever Callie does in regard to Sheldon can be subbed).
* "Iii" = Anger.
* "Waiii" = Excitement.

As for romanization, earlier I proposed a derivative of Hebon-shoji be used for romanization.

As for a language particle: Derive the word for mouth?

 

[PiyozR]

I'm all for simplification and making this all easier to communicate and duplicate. But don't you think creating a new notation system for Inkling is going to make following and learning our language even harder? Using basic IPA is something that most people following us have managed to grasp so far without any trouble. But assembling a new system that we'd have to learn in order to read a language? I mean, you or I or most in this thread could probably handle that. But for most of the internet? That's just more work. I'd rather not our audience have to work to learn Inkling.

If this is accepted, we no longer have to copy-paste from Wikipedia or anything, just type normally. We could even switch entirely to this alphabet for a while while we reconstruct the syllabary! Just a crazy thought though. Kinda like abandoning Chu Nom for Latin, or abandoning Chinese ideographs for Hangul.

Except we would have to copy and paste these letters because Š and Ŧ and Œ I can't produce without copying from the internet or from a word processor.

And again, I don't see what needs to be reconstructed about our syllabary. I'm perfectly happy with it as it is and we're already underway in sending it out into the world. Not that I'm going to turn away free advice. As always, anyone with specific advice is welcome to share it until we do.

(I've noticed that ŧu koi (kill) and ŧu ko i (darn it) are homophones.)

That's a mistake that I noticed today. "Kill" is meant to be /tsuko/. "Darn it" is then /tsuko i/ as in "kill me!" I'm going to fix that tonight. Thanks for pointing it out! Or else I'd forget completely.

Side talk: We need a particle for "language", as in "the English/Japanese language"/「英語・日本語」. We also need a word for "Octoling". I'd also want some interjections.

I'm adding those to my list of words to add: "language", "Octoling", "team" and the passive voice particle. As for interjections, we have /wa/, being an expression of shock or surprise. Same goes for /ajo/. Then, as EclipseMT mentioned, "buuu..." for disapproval, "Iiiii!" for fright, and "waiiiii..." for positive excitement.

EDIT: I modified the PDF with all the changes listed above.

 

[theFIZZYnator]

I'm all for simplification and making this all easier to communicate and duplicate. But don't you think creating a new notation system for Inkling is going to make following and learning our language even harder? Using basic IPA is something that most people following us have managed to grasp so far without any trouble. But assembling a new system that we'd have to learn in order to read a language? I mean, you or I or most in this thread could probably handle that. But for most of the internet? That's just more work. I'd rather not our audience have to work to learn Inkling.

My proposed system is actually nothing new. The problem with pseudo-IPA notation is that you can't type them straight from the keyboard, and that the pronunciation notated in the ongoing pseudo-IPA notation is not very accurate.

Except we would have to copy and paste these letters because Š and Ŧ and Œ I can't produce without copying from the internet or from a word processor.

I've also provided (in small type) the ASCII-only alternatives for the letters: Č = ch, cz; Š = sh, sz; Ŧ = ts, tz; Ž = zh, j; Æ = ai, e; È = ie, ye; Œ = oi, i. The Inkling language is meant to be a mysterious, foreign language; the main point of the accent marks was to make it look the part. (The other point was to make a 1-to-1 correspondence between the sound and the letters.)

And again, I don't see what needs to be reconstructed about our syllabary. I'm perfectly happy with it as it is and we're already underway in sending it out into the world. Not that I'm going to turn away free advice. As always, anyone with specific advice is welcome to share it until we do.

Currently, de is a tack pointing down, and with each rotation, it becomes di, do, and du. Contrast this, however, with me mai mi mo, ne nu na ni, and eyi oye uye aye. Obviously, some standardization should be done to further patternify the letters. Sure, natural languages may lack in pattern sometimes, but I don't think it is necessary to divert from a pattern this time.
Also, some syllables are missing, like a, fo, and hi, as well as many in the *ai, *ie, and *oi columns, which motivated me to suggest flattening them into single vowels. The assignment of the letters has a lot of room for improvement.

That's a mistake that I noticed today. "Kill" is meant to be /tsuko/. "Darn it" is then /tsuko i/ as in "kill me!" I'm going to fix that tonight. Thanks for pointing it out! Or else I'd forget completely.

No problem! I'm into things like this. When you're done with the other words, perhaps you could add some obscene words as well? That's one of the first things people remember when learning another language: greetings, numbers, and profanity.

I'm adding those to my list of words to add: "language", "Octoling", "team" and the passive voice particle. As for interjections, we have /wa/, being an expression of shock or surprise. Same goes for /ajo/. Then, as EclipseMT mentioned, "buuu..." for disapproval, "Iiiii!" for fright, and "waiiiii..." for positive excitement.

Can't wait to see an official dictionary/vocab list for the Inkling language! The lexicon expands day by day.

Another suggestion to finish my post with: We should use some symbol other than / to quote Inkling text. Perhaps | | (pipe) or { } (braces) will do?
| Pa pu-bihe pèsuzoi da iyeseehu? | - "Can you see the Octarian on the machine?"
{ Pa pu-bihe pèsuzoi da iyeseehu? } - "Can you see the Octarian on the machine?"

 

[EclipseMT]

I was thinking "Iiiiii!" was the extreme screeching one makes when angry.

If we are adding glottal stops, "I!" (stop at end) can indicate surprise.

Otherwise, "Ay!"

 

[Doringo]

Okay so last night I casually wrote down the syllabary in a notebook I had, hoping it would help the memorization effort (and maybe develop some kind of muscle memory for it).
However, some characters stumped me on how they would be written in a non bold/bubble form, mainly "ba" and "bu".
(And yes I used pencil instead of pen ink, unfortunately.)

What do you people make of it?

 

[Joseph Staleknight]

Okay so last night I casually wrote down the syllabary in a notebook I had, hoping it would help the memorization effort (and maybe develop some kind of muscle memory for it).
However, some characters stumped me on how they would be written in a non bold/bubble form, mainly "ba" and "bu".
(And yes I used pencil instead of pen ink, unfortunately.)

What do you people make of it?

While I admire your effort in getting it down to muscle memory, I feel that grids would be better for quick reference. You can have one for the normal syllables, one for the sounds represented by the "e" and "Q"-shaped glyphs, and a special place off to the side for the special dual syllables ati, ota, etc. Still, can't go wrong with practicing writing them!

Also, some syllables are missing, like a, fo, and hi, as well as many in the *ai, *ie, and *oi columns, which motivated me to suggest flattening them into single vowels. The assignment of the letters has a lot of room for improvement.

As far as I know, those missing syllables could have existed in Old Inkling before they either dropped them or conflated them with other syllables (e.g. fo -> fu, a -> aje). While we're mostly focused on Modern Inkling here, this idea helps give the language some depth and plausibility as one that still stays fresh through time.