#echolian

[seraphinitegames]

I love seeing how Mishka puts together the Echolian language! And here we have another example - so far we've only had words but now, someone is speaking Echolian in full! Although, a quick fact from Mishka, Echolian is not supposed to sound like separate words when you speak it, more like one smooth sound!

And for those that like to dig further into the language - here are the pronunciations:

*Wheel dols chew deer yuh-she-tow ush awe chod chaz wheel*

Is Mishka a secret linguist? Maybe!

[seraphinitegames]

What does hach'ulis mean?

Hehe! It's an Echolian insult.

It kind of means like the person you're referring to is an 'asshole', but slightly stronger :D

Thank you so much for the ask! :)

[seraphinitegames]

Greetings oh great and mighty Sera. In a fairly recent ask, you mentioned that hearing F speak Echolian with a New Orleans accent would lowkey make you swoon, and it got me thinking... what does Echolian sound like? Is it Germanic? Slavic? etc. Or is it something completely out of this world?...Just curious :). Have a stupendous day <3

Ah, this is kind of difficult because I’m terrible with accents! Like, I will recognise it is an accent but sometimes I just cannot for the life of me place where its from!

Weirdly, I wanted Echolian to sound soft like the elvish from Tolkien’s world (sindarin, specifically), but I didn’t want to be exactly like that.

It ended up being soft-ish but with it’s own twist.

Wow, that didn’t help at all! :D One day I will try and down a video of speaking Echolian if you’re interested? Might be an easier way for you to determine for yourself!

Thank you so much for the ask! Hope you have an amazing day too :)

[seraphinitegames]

F mentions while cleaning up MC's files that N taught them English. Does N know Echolian? Or just many human languages?

N does know Echolian, yeah. Not to the ability of F obviously, them being a natural speaker and all :D

But N can definitely speak Echolian fluently.

Thank you so much for the ask! :)

[seraphinitegames]

Hi! I'm new to all this, but Wayhaven was an incredible introduction to interactive fiction. Will Echolian be a fully-fledged conlang or something simpler? I would be really excited if it were the former, but it is a lot of work to do that along with writing the story itself.

It will be a lot simpler :D I’m not a language person, like, at all, lol!

I wanted a usable language but also something that was accessible to most readers (including those who language-challenged, such as myself, hehe!).

It does get a bit complicated on some points, as though it’s kind of based on an English alphabet it doesn’t use all the letters and some letters are replaced by three letter combinations. 

It was supposed to feel flowing, almost like when you speak it it’s just one long word. Also, it was never a written language for a very long time, so I wanted it to feel like that when you actually do write it out.

Echolian is the language used throughout all of the Echo World, but there are some big variations in regions and areas on how words are constructed and spoken, which I’ve also wanted to account for.

So in some ways, it’s very simple, in others ways it’s become more complicated than expected, hehe! But I really hoped to make something that seemed real and strong, not just thrown together.

Thank you so much for the ask! :)

[seraphinitegames]

Would echolian be done with the same alphabet as us? I really wouldn't think so lol, but how different would it be? Would writing almost feel like an entirely different concept? Could it at least be converted into our alphabet easily? Thanks so much!

Echolian has a basis on our alphabet, definitely, but it gets kinda complicated that some of the letters aren’t just letters. The letter is made up of a combination of three letters. This is because Echolian was only a spoken language for a VERY long time.

Writing it is a very different concept as there some rules about how the letters go together to account for those combinations.

It’s a bit complicated, but also kinda makes sense :D I definitely wanted the language to be something that was accessible for everyone!

Thank you so much for the ask! :)

[seraphinitegames]

Does N speak echolian? If yes, how did they learn it? And would N or F ever speak ehcolian for the detective if asked? Thanks in advance!

Yes they do! They learnt it from supernaturals who act as translators/language tutors for the Agency, usually natural supernaturals who came from the Echo World a LONG time ago.

N is more likely to speak Echolian for the MC than F, but F would do it.

Thank you so much for the ask! :)

[seraphinitegames]

Would UB feel any type of way with a Detective that wanted to learn Echolian?

I’ll have to give a non-answer to this ;)

Thank you so much for the ask, though! :)