Iāve spent several hours making a Fake Galarian Alphabet that anyone can use on fan stuff! :3
Iāll begin with some geeky language-freak stuff, so if you donāt wanna see this part, skip to PartĀ 2.
(Iām a language arts bachelor, so yeah, you should expect a bunch of weird stuff from meā¦)
So, as most of you who have played or seen PokĆ©mon 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 didnāt get a lot as result⦠So i begun trying to decypher it myself, HOWEVERā¦
When comparing some of the few things that we actually know the translations (Game Freakās logo, Macro Crosmosā logo and Budew Innās logo), Iāve realized that the letters donāt have the same equivalents in the Latin Alphabet on those three logos. Itās in fact very far from making sense. On the picture above, you can see that Iāve 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 lettersĀ āAā andĀ āMā are the only ones that seemed to match in all three logos, while the others were a big mess. Iāve tried writing both āBudewā andĀ āSubomieāĀ (its name in japanese), but none of the versions matched the other logos. And the english name didnāt even have enough letters to fill all the characters on the innās logo.
We have those three horizontal lines used as anĀ āEā in Game Freak, but as anĀ āSā in Macro Cosmos, while in Budew Inn it could only beĀ āDā orĀ āBā. The letter that resembles two Xs is used as aĀ āKā in Game Freak, but as anĀ āMā in Macro Cromos.The letter used as anĀ āRā in Macro Cosmos is very different from the letter used as an āRā in Game Freak. And theĀ āOās in Macro Cosmos show up in Budew Innās logo, but in a position that could only meanĀ āUā in both languages⦠Also, the letter forĀ āCā in Macro is different from the letter used asĀ āCā in Cosmos, and thatās within the same logoā¦
So, after going insane looking at all those logos and many other words from the game, including something that I can only presume to beĀ āGalar Leagueā, 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 donāt really believe there is a logic, like a real correlation⦠if there is, itās more complicated than just replacing Latin letters for Galarian letters. Basically, itās either a very complex writting system and maybe even a variation of a language⦠Or⦠(more likely in my opinion), itās really just random and they use the symbols without thinking much.
Some people suggested on the Internet (you know, Iām not the only freak trying to figure out the alphabetā¦) that the symbols being used differently for two letters could be due to capitalization. But still didnāt 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 donāt believe Game Freak would take the time to make that and I donāt 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. Itās PokĆ©mon. Why would Game Freak leave half the PokĆ©dex out of the game while they put an insane effort into creating two different but similar alphabets for Galar?
So yeah. Iām 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 Iām the only one.)
Sooooooooā¦. Iāve 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. :)
Iāve used the correlation in Game Freak as my base, so you can see that the letters in that word will match. Also, I kept theĀ āMā 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 Iāve decided to add more letters to the Galarian Alphabet, inspired by sounds that Iāve seen in other languages. :3
In the end, Iāve 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 didnāt make numbers, because the numbers on the charactersā clothes are the same! So itās 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 (thatās 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:
Iāll 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 Iāve added the sounds that each letter should make. Iāve 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 ā/a/ā). Understanding this is not that simple⦠And it may be kind of messy for people who are not educated in Linguistics⦠This is why Iāll 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! ^^
Iāve also written some stuff so that you can see what the Alphabet looks like when you write with it!:
>>> Also!!! The fact that Iāve added the extra letters (phonemes) makes it possible to write in Galarian using other languages as you base language! For example:
(We didnāt have a letter in Galarian for the Armenian letter āÕā (āghā), so Iāve used the closest one (ākhā) - 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 exampleā¦Ā
Instead ofĀ āKABUā, you can replace theĀ āKā for the āAspirated Kā, and write āKāabuā. Orā¦
Instead ofĀ āRaihanā, you can replace theĀ āHā for the āStrong Hā, and write āRaikhanā.Ā
It may seem kind of useless in these examples, but if youāre writing a word with two of the same letter, you can replace one to avoid repeating a symbol! ^^ For example, you can write āpoppyā replacing the first āPā for the āAspirated Pāā¦
You can also use this as a tool to make your words harder to decypher! If you wirteĀ āPāoppyā, people will think the first letter is not a P, when it is being used as a P in that wordā¦
Basically, Iāve 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 alphabetā¦But Iām not sure if Iāll make it. For now, Iāll 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 itās not amazing, but itās what I have for now. ^^ I hope I find an easy way to turn this into an actual font! ^^
>>> White background picture:
Thatās 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! ^^
Please have a snom! :3 ā„