I’ve spent several hours making a Fake Galarian Alphabet that anyone can use on fan stuff! :3
I’ll begin with some geeky language-freak stuff, so if you don’t wanna see this part, skip to Part 2.
(I’m a language arts bachelor, so yeah, you should expect a bunch of weird stuff from me…)
So, as most of you who have played or seen Pokémon SWSH have probably noticed, Galar has its own writing system. I was searching about that for a while yesterday trying to figure out if anyone had deciphered it yet, but didn’t get a lot as result… So i begun trying to decypher it myself, HOWEVER…
When comparing some of the few things that we actually know the translations (Game Freak’s logo, Macro Crosmos’ logo and Budew Inn’s logo), I’ve realized that the letters don’t have the same equivalents in the Latin Alphabet on those three logos. It’s in fact very far from making sense. On the picture above, you can see that I’ve compared the letters on the three logos. The ones circled in red are the ones that do not match, while the ones in green match. Basically, the letters “A” and “M” are the only ones that seemed to match in all three logos, while the others were a big mess. I’ve tried writing both “Budew” and “Subomie” (its name in japanese), but none of the versions matched the other logos. And the english name didn’t even have enough letters to fill all the characters on the inn’s logo.
We have those three horizontal lines used as an “E” in Game Freak, but as an “S” in Macro Cosmos, while in Budew Inn it could only be “D” or “B”. The letter that resembles two Xs is used as a “K” in Game Freak, but as an “M” in Macro Cromos.The letter used as an “R” in Macro Cosmos is very different from the letter used as an “R” in Game Freak. And the “O”s in Macro Cosmos show up in Budew Inn’s logo, but in a position that could only mean “U” in both languages… Also, the letter for “C” in Macro is different from the letter used as “C” in Cosmos, and that’s within the same logo…
So, after going insane looking at all those logos and many other words from the game, including something that I can only presume to be “Galar League”, that appears in several situations in game… I got to the conclusion that it is not a real code, just random letters that are positioned in a way that they resemble our words, they are somewhat readable but look like another alphabet. I don’t really believe there is a logic, like a real correlation… if there is, it’s more complicated than just replacing Latin letters for Galarian letters. Basically, it’s either a very complex writting system and maybe even a variation of a language… Or… (more likely in my opinion), it’s really just random and they use the symbols without thinking much.
Some people suggested on the Internet (you know, I’m not the only freak trying to figure out the alphabet…) that the symbols being used differently for two letters could be due to capitalization. But still didn’t make much sense. Firstly because in some words we would need random capital letters in the middle of words… And secondly because many of those symbols are repeated with other correlations. Some other people said that maybe Galar has two alphabets, but I don’t believe Game Freak would take the time to make that and I don’t think that a language with two alphabets would have so many identical letters meaning different sounds depending on the variation… It could be, but like. It’s Pokémon. Why would Game Freak leave half the Pokédex out of the game while they put an insane effort into creating two different but similar alphabets for Galar?
So yeah. I’m pretty sure there is no real logic or code or anything going on in the Galarian Alphabet in the games. But. We all like to create fan content, and we all like to do it nicely with logic and precie correlations, right? (I think… hehe. Maybe I’m the only one.)
Soooooooo…. I’ve decided that I was going to create my own correlation to the Galarian leters I have found and create a fake Galarian alphabet to use in fan content. :)
I’ve used the correlation in Game Freak as my base, so you can see that the letters in that word will match. Also, I kept the “M” since it was a consistent letter in two of the logos. the rest is pretty much made up! I have all the letters in our alphabet here, but there were some spare ones. I could have used them as capitals… But I preferred to come up with my own Capital letters, so I’ve decided to add more letters to the Galarian Alphabet, inspired by sounds that I’ve seen in other languages. :3
In the end, I’ve come up with 37 letters (with their respective sounds) for the alphabet, nearly as many as the Armenian alphabet, which has 39. Also came up with a few punctuation signs (! , . ?) that I think are necessary in all writing systems. I didn’t make numbers, because the numbers on the characters’ clothes are the same! So it’s pretty much canon that Galar has a different alphabet, but uses the same numbers we do.
Aaaaand… Because I apparently have nothing else to do (that’s a lie), I also made the cursives for the Galarian alphabet. ^^ We have uppercase and lower case in both block letters and cursive letters! :D
>>> Welp, so… Here are they are:
I’ll leave a few zoom-in pics, because I think this one may be too big for a text post and tumblr will likely screw up the resolution:
>>> LETTERS FROM OUR ALPHABET (ENGLISH):
>>> LETTERS THAT ARE NOT IN OUR ALPHABET (ENGLISH):
Well, you can see that I’ve added the sounds that each letter should make. I’ve tried to give an example of a description, but Ive also added the symbols from the
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)
so that people can know what the sounds should be (the IPA symbols are the symbols written between slashs, like “/a/”). Understanding this is not that simple… And it may be kind of messy for people who are not educated in Linguistics… This is why I’ll leave this link to an online interactive IPA chart that you can use if you like!
You just have to click the symbol and you will hear a person saying the sound it makes! ^^
I’ve also written some stuff so that you can see what the Alphabet looks like when you write with it!:
>>> Also!!! The fact that I’ve added the extra letters (phonemes) makes it possible to write in Galarian using other languages as you base language! For example:
(We didn’t have a letter in Galarian for the Armenian letter “Ղ” (”gh”), so I’ve used the closest one (”kh”) - but basically we can adapt the alphabet into many languages, which I think is pretty cool!)
>>> Another use for these letters is creating some symbol diversity! You can replace similar sounding letters to make your words look a bit more different, for example…
Instead of “KABU”, you can replace the “K” for the “Aspirated K”, and write “K’abu”. Or…
Instead of “Raihan”, you can replace the “H” for the “Strong H”, and write “Raikhan”.
It may seem kind of useless in these examples, but if you’re writing a word with two of the same letter, you can replace one to avoid repeating a symbol! ^^ For example, you can write “poppy” replacing the first “P” for the “Aspirated P”…
You can also use this as a tool to make your words harder to decypher! If you wirte “P’oppy”, people will think the first letter is not a P, when it is being used as a P in that word…
Basically, I’ve selected/created 37 Galarian characters that you can use as you wish, following my correlations to the Latin alphabet or not!
I really want to make it into a downloadable font… At least the letters that are direct transliterations from the Latin alphabet…But I’m not sure if I’ll make it. For now, I’ll leave a picture with white background of all the letters on the first image. This way, if you want to use them, you can copy and paste them into other stuff (if you multiply the alphabet layer, the white background should become transparent). I know it’s not amazing, but it’s what I have for now. ^^ I hope I find an easy way to turn this into an actual font! ^^
>>> White background picture:
That’s it, guys. Thanks for putting up with my language-freak stuff! :D I hope you can find a use for all that in your fan-stuff… or at least that you find it interesting or pretty or appreciate it in any way!
I loved creating the cursives and writing with this alphabet feels really amazing! ^^
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