Spanish is known as the language of love, German is known as the language of schnitzel, Italian is known as the language of pasta, Russian is known as the language of low temperatures, and English is known as the language of people who went to space. No matter what one’s opinions may be of different languages or their difficulty to master, everyone can agree that video games are really cool. So, this editorial will cover three languages that originate from video games that may or may not one day take over a country as being their new primary language.
More like Dovah ZUUL, right?
First up to the arena is the combatant known as Dovahzul (also referred to as Dragon Speak or Dragonish), from that game that came out five years that had all those arrow to the knee jokes everybody loved, Skyrim. Ah, the good ol’ days when memes were created out of desperation of new comedy and not because Ted Cruz slam dunked a sports website. Back on track, even thought it may not appear like it, Dovahzul is actually grammatically similar to English and does not require the same syntax needed for languages like Spanish. This means that a sentence such as, “Zu’u hind dii Dad loved zu’u” could be read directly from left to right. One fun thing about Dovahzul is that plurals are not created by using the letter “s” but instead by repeating the last letter and then adding an “e” (e.x. buttte/butts).
It was supposed to be pronounced like “Dunny.”
Next fighter in the boxing rink is the language of D’ni from Myst which was released all the way back in 1993 before English was truly finalized as a language. Instead of an easy alphabet of 26 letters, D’ni decides to complicate things by having 35 phonetic sounds, each one with its own character. Though, it does make sense as these sounds differentiate letters based on how one might pronounce them (e.x. the ee in teeth vs. the e in fret are two separate letters). Not only this, but the letters in the D’ni language do not look wildly different from normal letters, although they do all look annoyingly similar (and that is not racist if it is true). Other than that, D’ni does appear to be a vast improvement over the English language used today. This editorial is not meant to be some sort of conversion or political statement, but it is possible that readers should simply consider looking into replacing English with D’ni.
Surely they try to make sense of the differing languages in Hyrule Historia, but who pays attention to their confusing timelines?
Last up is one of the most famous video game based languages, Hylian, from “The Legend of Zelda” franchise. Although, what some may not realize is that Hylian has undergone multiple forms through the series such as Old Hylian, New Hylian, and Logographic Hylian. While games such as The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening use Logographic Hylian which is a language derived from symbols that represent words rather than direct letters to sound while The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker features both New Hylian during the opening credits and Old Hylian which is spoken by the older characters such as Valoo and Jabun which can be translated during a New Game Plus playthrough. Hylian takes multiple roots as it has been based off of Latin, English, and primarily Japanese hiragana and katakana, but who knows what The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild has in store for future players come this March?
And there we have it, a good, clean, editorial all about three different video game languages. Are you fluent in any video-game based languages that were or were not mentioned in this editorial? Or do you plan to start the fight to swap English out for the more fleshed out D’ni language? Or maybe you just have a suggestion for a future editorial because you hate it when Adeki writes missing Dad jokes. Whatever it may be, make sure to leave a comment below and let us know what you think!
