Welcome to Languages-Ahoy! I'm not a professional nor do I take any classes on the subject but I'm pretty knowledgeable about language related things as you can ask for help if you're trying to learn a language as I can give tips or even show you how to understand a concept. This blog contains various things surrounded by the main idea of language like things that I notice, similarities, and comparisons of multiple languages and scripts. Helpful tutorials or videos displaying and/or teaching language related things like how to pronounce the Close-mid front rounded vowel IPA: ø Or things like teaching the French u or the German ö or the Polish y and what not. Or how to use whom in English. Another main patch is you'll see related humor and even scripts and languages I made of my own! I hope this blog was helpful and very interesting! ツ
WOO! Oh man has it been so long since I've done one of these. It's just they're so hard to come by these days you know? Seriously, if you found some script or any aspect of a made up language in a show or some form of media, show it to me as I'll gladly analyze it in the manner below and before. Without further ado, let's get to it!
It was one day when the TV was on and I saw pokémon. At some point I saw this weird writing system that wasn't present in any other kind of pokémon series to my knowledge. In fact, it even made me question whether older pokémon series had this and after I briefly checked some, there really wasn't any or much at all. Although, I don't know the complete ins and outs of pokémon as I surely would remember them plastering this new foreign script everywhere like they do in the XY one thus, I shall name this script, Pokémon XY Script.
Here are some screenshots:
And these guys are everywhere in the series. So, what is it exactly?
Well, first I assumed it was some cypher for Japanese or English. I checked the translations for the pokémon to see if they match up with these. Evidently, they don't. Sure, Pancham (the second image) fits 7 to 7 for English/Japanese/Spanish/Italian but Scatterbug (the first image) doesn't fit any of the language translations 1 to 1. This also happens with many other cyphered pokémon names meaning that this script isn't concealing any known language as they should of all lined up for one language. I can only assume that this is a language on its own.
To further prove this is to understand why pokémon names tend to be translated in the first place. For example, what semantic meaning could you achieve from Fushigidane if you saw it? Could you even pronounce it right? Basically, this is what Bulbasaur is in Romanized Japanese. Most pokémon names are based off of compound words, puns, and other various gimmicks. Japanese actually goes further to include sentences and sound effects. What I'm getting at here is that pokémon names tend to be changed so they are more relatable and understandable in that target language. Of course you knew all of that but I'm bringing it up because I want to give a realistic reason to why this language wouldn't match up and how we could consider it a different language since they probably have their own words to compound or mess with as well.
At this point you're probably saying I'm wasting my breath talking about this obvious gibberish of a language. But in actuality, it more or less isn't. For example, pokémon names. Sure, they were generated in a random way but they still hold meaning and have a consistent name. The thing I like to do is to treat the gibberish as the actual language. Doing this (and assuming they were consistent about these random generations.) fills in all the so called irregularities by accepting these weird issues as they are. Normal. And using this line of reasoning, anything they put out is essentially what the true language is.
So after proving this is not any known language, and by accepting its ways, the next step is to figure out phonology. But there is one problem. This language has no speakers meaning that I will have to interpret the phonology in some other way. Currently, I have two ideas. The first is to use proper names or names as they tend to be very consistent (Ash, Brock, etc.) but this we would have to see how they sign there name or them on a billboard or something which I would imagine is quite rare. The second is "certain" pokémon names. For example, Pikachu stays the same in every translation even if Non-Japanese speakers don't realize that Pikapika and chuchu are sound effects for sparkling and squeaking, (And yes I know chu also is a kissing sound effect too.) which admittedly punches the previous thing I said about this. But consider why we called Okazaki fragments as they are for example. Because some guy (or more so, some guys) discovered it and decided to name it after himself. And thus every other language retains the Okazaki. Something similar could of happened in the pokémon world as there are many scientists in there too. The "national" pokédex highlights the idea that there are various places in the pokémon world as those places are known as regions based off of real world geography, especially the Kanto one. I can only assume that something akin to different languages building up their own perception of the world making their own words and names for things until they came together worldwide or more connected. With this in mind. We can pin down that sometimes pokémon name translations will be very different and that some will be retain a similar name throughout. However, even these methods have the possibility to not tell us how it would sound like. For example, Wikipedia transliterated into the cyrillic alphabet through Russian orthography and some grammar(It needs to be in its nominative or base form.) is Википедия However, Unmodified Cyrillic/Russian does not have a character that individually represents the W sound and therefore has to approximate it with the character that has the V sound which is B. Japanese changes a lot of English words' spellings and pronunciations due to how their writing system works. I'm not going to go into why that is so you'll have to check this link instead. Besides, this section is getting long enough as it is. http://www.sljfaq.org/afaq/english-in-japanese.html The point is, just because a name remains consistent in all versions doesn't mean that it that they aren't slightly bent to accommodate for certain lacks. Although, we'll just have to assume that this language at least has some of the most common sounds in the world. Besides, the amount of characters it has could help us determine how much. Maybe in the future once I get more information regarding this issue, I will probably update this section.
Speaking of characters though, we should check these suckers out with our eyes. First, I would like to note that there are actually multiple variations of the writing system used on all levels from buildings, technology, charts, and etc. Although, there is one system that prevails which is this one:
This one appears at least once every episode and is used typically in the pokédexes, posters, charts, and less often on buildings. Here's a variant.
This variant is also pretty used as they seem to be on more technological things but then again there's the first two examples.
Otherwise, there are handwritten and some other interesting variants that seem to go by their own sets of characters. Maybe it's just how you would write it as opposed to typing it. Here's just one example of a handwritten one:
(It's important to note that this image's orientation is upside-down towards us. I just wanted to retain the original image.)
And then I guess some other miscellaneous stuff:
However, punctuation tends to be same no matter what the variant is. First off, let's look at these:
Noticeably, There are no commas nor are there really any periods being used to end a sentence. This may seem weird but there are languages that don't use periods and even don't use or need ending punctuation entirely as typically particles or certain structures do the trick. Egyptian and Meso-American languages are pretty good examples. Chinese or Japanese are other examples too despite them actually using punctuation. They only started because it was a good idea to incorporate symbols as they are used with many other languages that do, Especially English. It would only make sense to just add them so everyone could get a head start. At this point, they're normal now. Besides, do you think Chinese or Japanese had these characters from the start of their creation despite being devoid of any European language influence? I didn't think so. Therefore, this all is actually pretty normal and possible for a language to have. Speaking of European influence, you should of noticed the stylized J at the very bottom-right on the first picture with the red text. Also, this is in the show:
So why would letters of the Roman alphabet be doing in a world where writing is typically done in something completely different? Why would Roman punctuation be in there as well? It slowly becomes clear that there must be some language or languages within that world that had it adopt those characters. Before, I pointed out that the geography of the pokémon world is based off of the real world. Typically each game takes place in a different region based off of the regions of Japan. However, in more recent games, one game has taken place in New York being the Unova Region and most recently in Pokémon XY... France. Could the world have grown up as it normally did but conveniently displaced the French language for this? All of these examples do take place in this modified France. And no, I tried French pokémon translations on this. It didn't work meaning this is still a very different language. Maybe it's really that all the languages we knew and love never existed as all along these things have been pre-translated for us. Even for Japanese, Pokémon's original language, would be translated from some unknown thing. Maybe it's simply the pokémon language which would explain why humans can understand pokémon even though they keep repeatedly saying their name. Whatever the case may be. It's hard to ignore the fact that this writing system obviously grew up very differently than the Latin alphabet as there is obvious influence, and motivation to be influenced showing that there are multiple languages going on in their world.
Now that we had assessed the visual aspects, I think I should get to more of how it works as my best guess is that it's an alphabet! Although, we should test all the various systems so let's bring up the list and take down these systems one by one.
Alphabet
Abjad
Abugida
Syllabary
Logography
I tried to count all of the unique characters of the first writing system I even showed you and I got to 23 as the second one I found 20. I'm fairly sure these should match as I probably haven't found enough evidence yet. There might even be more. If you don't believe me, try counting for yourself. Making weird names sort of helps too. But even with potential small variations in number, it goes to show that obviously this writing system recycles a limited amount of characters as some of the same characters are used by each other sometimes. Logography is out instantaneously as no logography would rely on such a small amount of characters. Do you think Chinese would survive with only 20 characters? Not at all. Completely unthinkable. Syllabaries and Abugidas are next to be out. The main issue is there's no good way on how you could create every syllable required to have many sounds. Central Rotokas on its most minimal level (Ignoring vowel length and treating the variations in voiced consonants as one entity.) would make too many characters. 6 consonants times 5 vowels would result in 30 separate characters needed. Unless you get rid of some consonants or vowels, it would be barely natural and impossible. Abugidas have some similar issues but obviously with a different way to put it. This would leave alphabets and abjads left. Honestly, I think they're fair game. The only reason I'm siding on alphabet is because I think the makers of this font probably weren't thinking about making a random character system that would purposely exclude vowels as they were Japanese.(Original language for the series) English is an alphabet as they probably mentally thought of making the font as the Japanese tend to well, know about English and how their romanization system works and probably know less about how abjads work or what they are. But if you exclude that small tidbit, abjads are just as welcomed. I feel that figuring out what writing system is most likely being used important as it might help us pinpoint where sounds would be if we can find those proper names or consistent pokémon names. We could guess where and which sounds would be used.
Finally, there's some more miscellaneous tidbits I want to talk about. The odd nature of pokémon names in this language would be one of them. If you haven't noticed, pokémon names always seem to have 7 letters. So far I have snapped 14 pictures of pokémon from this series as 13 of them have 7 characters. I think it's safe to assume that the majority and what's normal has 7 characters. All of them except for this guy:
Why this pokémon has six characters I don't know as it even looks like one is missing. Despite the awesome pattern being broken, it actually makes me feel better because that means pokémon don't have to have 7 letter names all the time in that language but I guess it's just most common. Although, I must ask, why 7 letters? Why of all letters, specifically 7? My best guess is that it's based off the amount of letters the word pokémon has. Another concerning thing:
Typically pokémon have distinct names right? My best guess for this is that at least one of the characters can be pronounced differently or have multiple pronunciations. Consider bow and bow. Bow works nicely because depending how you pronounce it, there are different meanings which reminds me of tonal languages but I think this example will suffice. Actually, what if this language had tones? Of course it seems like they would be unmarked. But who knows? We still don't have anything related to phonetics yet so that also could be a pretty good answer.
Otherwise, thanks for reading and checking out my theory and analyzation work. If you have questions or want to tell/send me something, just use the ask. If you want to use this to spring deeper into the abyss, be my guest. Mainly, I hoped you enjoyed it whether you are a pokémon fan or not. I just love breathing life into things that weren't meant to be breathed life into in the first place. I end up learning how interesting these things and situations could be and end up helping or entertaining others if they also wish to investigate as well. They are just so fun.
It's a pretty old site but still pretty awesome and useful if you really want to learn about all the unique and diverse Indo-European Scripts out there as well as their origins, uses, variants, what it was derived from, images, and probably more than I can think of at the moment. .
Just go up to the top right and "choose from the list" to get going.
And actually,(assuming you're still reading this,) don't go there yet. Try playing a game on guessing exactly how many of these scripts you can identify. Name included obviously. I got... well... ugh, 5.
Afrikaans is believed to be the youngest “natural language” in the world. Afrikaans evolved from Dutch, when Dutch settlers arrived in what is now South Africa in 1652. It was considered to be a dialect of Dutch until the late 1800s, when Afrikaans began being classified as a language in its own right.
Fun fact: There are a lot of rivers in the UK named “avon” because the Romans arrived and asked the Celts what the rivers were called. The Celts answered “avon.”
You know, I've always wondered that myself. I have theories though that fits for various cases. First off, division from a source.
Norweigian and Danish are excellent examples because first off, the two languages come from the North Germanic branch as they have many words similar to each other to the point where products just put one text with slashes for differing words (it's like if I did eggplant/aubergine on a product.) as N/D is by it. You would then see how easy it would be to teach each other, although, many examples are languages coming from others but it still answers the question.
Let's talk about what came from Vulgar Latin. Obviously, many Romance languages. And you can't suddenly just make a new language through that division. No, I believe that in slow motion, these guys obviously had the same situation like what I just said above as you start to realize that it's as if these were many Vulgar Latin dialects at some that eventually spread apart. In the middle of this madness, You can obviously conclude that they could more or less still understand each other, they just had to really listen or read very carefully. And with all these relations, they would've been able to understand each other even if they are very different and weren't from each other. Patterns would guide them.
But let's talk about something even more interesting, what about the languages that come from very different backgrounds? Where the heck do they start? After looking some things up, most people said sort of like what I said, basically, a bunch of verbal association with objects. Another idea I found was the idea of making a bilingual baby.
My formal guess for how is that when people didn't know, I assume some guys decided to actually attempt to learn it, first by what was mentioned before, verbal association with objects, like pointing to some words an saying what they are. More importantly however, they must realize the patterns and why does it seem eerily convenient that when this guy says this, it means this and etc. I actually use this technique for learning actual languages (for specific nuances in words), and interpreting/figuring out conlangs or made up languages.
Otherwise, I hope that answered the question to some degree as well as made people think in some way.
Wow, I have actually not seen this type of art done with Chinese characters before; usually with Arabic or something. Man, if only I knew the original artist. I tried to look it up but I either found sites that didn't know either or Chinese that I couldn't understand. Maybe one day I guess because I would have loved to see more.
But anyways, I finally introduce the project I've been working on for many hours throughout the days.
Formalizing the ÖXXÖ XÖÖX language.
Basically, if you're a fan of ÖXXÖ XÖÖX, you'll probably have known that in their music, there's this alien language. Now, if you ever looked at their lyrics with the dictionary, you would have noticed that there are some weird untranslated and nonsensical bits here and there. The goal here is that I attempt to make sense of all of those weird bits and even make the language a ton more usable and communicate-able than ever before!
This is done by observing patterns and making light and sense of them and proving there existence. Slowly, even the music lyrics and the language as a whole should make a lot more sense to you after gazing or even attempting to learn this.
Even if you aren't a fan, if you enjoy looking at theory work and very weird conlangs and how one would figure out them. Then give it a look if you want!
Continue here:
http://languagesahoy.tumblr.com/oxxo-xoox
Warning, the page size will be enormous.
There's also the enhanced dictionary where It's basically the vocabulary on the album but fixed of spelling errors and with pronunciation! (It's not done yet but we'll get there.) Also, while rereading the lyrics a bunch of times, I found out that there were some words not posted on the official dictionary from the original site so I added those in too.
Create a logographic conscript for everyday use in a conworld setting. No, it didn’t go through a pictographic stage. And no, it has absolutely no connection to the phonology of the language, either. It’s completely abstract and arbitrary, and complicated character forms representing extremely different concepts often differ by the addition of a single, tiny stroke.
(Fun fact: This happened in real life when the Tangut script was created.)
Nüshu (literally “women’s writing” in Chinese) is a syllabic script created and used exclusively by women in the Jiangyong County in Hunan province of southern China. Up until the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1912) women were forbidden access to formal education, and so Nüshu was developed in secrecy as a means to communicate. Since its discovery in 1982, Nüshu remains to be the only gender-specific writing system in the world.
A very unofficial and probably unfinished work where someone decided to formalize the syntax and lexicon of Toki Pona as well as applying some Lojban stuff to it.
After quickly speed reading it, I did find some of it interesting. I really would of liked to see them get more into the Lojban aspect though. But then again, it does seem very prototype-like. Otherwise, I just felt like posting this unheard experiment.
annaxmalina
baratheonpilled
turnnoffyourmind
dededos
ellievsbear
discoholicmusic
jbbartram-illu
