Aren’t Fictional Languages in Anime Interesting?

[TinyRedLeaf]

I highly doubt we will ever see the likes of Quenya again in the realm of fictional languages. Its creator J.R.R. Tolkien was not only a professor of languages with a life-long interest in creating actual languages just for fun, but he also belonged to that generation of academics who had the time to indulge in such esoteric hobbies.

There were two key points I took away from reading the biographical notes on Quenya included in my copy of The Lord of the Rings: Tolkien believed that a language must not only sound nice, but also look beautiful on paper. Typography was as important to him as rhythmic quality.

So pardon me for saying this: anime's fictional languages, while fun in their own right, have nothing on fictional languages in a whole host of other stories in other mediums.

Don't get me wrong; they are if nothing else imaginative. But Ente Islan when spoken sounds to me like someone choking on his tongue. Suzuno Kamazuki's voice actress is about the only one who manages to speak the language without having it grate on my ears.

[Cosmic Eagle]

Sounding? In terms of that Ar Tonelico's Hymnos certainly can match Quenya IMO

[Obelisk ze Tormentor]

Originally Posted by TinyRedLeaf

So pardon me for saying this: anime's fictional languages, while fun in their own right, have nothing on fictional languages in a whole host of other stories in other mediums.

Don't get me wrong; they are if nothing else imaginative. But Ente Islan when spoken sounds to me like someone choking on his tongue. Suzuno Kamazuki's voice actress is about the only one who manages to speak the language without having it grate on my ears.

Mate, while your point is very much sound, this thread was never meant to compare anime’s made-up languages with other (superior) made-up languages from other media such as classic novels. So, can we please stay within anime realm (we can also include Japanese games/VNs too if you so insist). Hell, I know the Hataraku VAs speak Ente-Islan like native-Americans speaking English for the first time, but can we not compare it with other non-anime media?

If this keeps up, I’m afraid this thread will just become a minefield of bashing and ridiculing whatever exotic languages anime come up with by making comparison with Quenya, Klingons, etc.

[TinyRedLeaf]

Originally Posted by Obelisk ze Tormentor

If this keeps up, I’m afraid this thread will just become a minefield of bashing and ridiculing whatever exotic languages anime come up with by making comparison with Quenya, Klingons, etc.

Ah, I see, point taken.

Back to your original post, though, you said:

Originally Posted by Obelisk ze Tormentor

I personally think all those made-up languages are great to have (awkwardness and all) because they really give us a glimpse of an actual culture which is different from the main setting. They also give us (jaded fans) some variety from the usual Japanese dialogues even if it’s just for a short time. I don’t know about you guys, but I think they should make these kinds of made-up languages more often as long as the setting and plot need it.

I think that's the key problem. I dislike the use of fictional languages just for the sake of using them. As you say, the fictional language ought to give us an insight into the culture and setting of the story's location. In anime, however, such "languages" tend to come across more often as a gimmick than something authentic.

You make an interesting point, though, about the qualitative difference between the sounds of Ente Islan and the machine-like language of future humans in Suisei no Gargantia. I don't actually hear the difference, but if it works for you, that's fine by me.

Still, I'm yet to come across a fictional language in anime that actually alludes to the lore of its setting. I have, on the other hand, come across anime that successfully hints at the deeper socio-cultural history of its location without resorting to such devices. In The Twelve Kingdoms, for example, the language barrier between outsiders and natives of the realm was a crucial plot point, but that was easy enough to set up with exposition alone. There was no need to "create" a language to illustrate the point.

Real-life languages have also been used to highlight the "foreign" factor of outsiders in a fantasy setting. In the anime version of Seirei no Moribito, for example, the lead character occasionally uses English words in her speech. Any real-life viewer would still know what she meant, because the words she used are common loan words in modern Japanese. But the natives of the country she was wandering through were perplexed, because they spoke a "purer" form of Japanese, one that didn't make use of modern loan words.

In short, if the story is executed properly, a fictional language shouldn't be needed to flesh out a setting or plot. Then again, there's no real harm in having one either, especially if some thought did go into the creation of actual nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs and sentence structure.

There's the fun that comes from deciphering what was said. Still, I do wish that whatever language was created actually sounds pleasant. Seiyuu have a hard enough time as it were voicing foreign languages. Fictional languages feel like a further unnecessary hardship to me, unless they are executed well.

[Azuma Denton]

I think for seiyuu to actually sound nice voicing a fictional language is kinda hard to get, TRL.
As they need to have intense training speaking that paticular language and its accent.
Kinda like how we learn another language till its become our secondary / native language.


But yeah, it will definitely nice if a seiyuu can produce accent of their own instead of just reading it.

[Frailty]

Ancient Ispanian from Tales of the Abyss

They only appear when someone reads the score and when Tear sings the fonic hymns. When Ion reads the score, they're already translated though. Luke, Asch and Van's names have meaning when translated to Ancient Ispanian. The only time we get to hear the language is when Tear sings the fonic hymns.

It's not an anime, but Final Fantasy X had the Al Bhed language which replaces a letter to different one. Ysywehk!
lots of Final Fantasies have different unique languages, but the one most notable for me was the Al Bhed since we get to hear them speak it. It was also pretty amusing to hear Tidus speak it with Rin when you complete collecting those Al Bhed primers.

I agree that Fictional Languages are interesting, it makes one wonder how someone comes up with them.

[TinyRedLeaf]

Originally Posted by Frailty

I agree that Fictional Languages are interesting, it makes one wonder how someone comes up with them.

That's the fun factor I was alluding to earlier. In the Journey video-game by indie developer Thatgamecompany, the gamer enters a post-apocalyptic world littered with ruins covered in strange symbols that appear to be the characters of a long-forgotten language.

They seemed random at first, until some gamers began to notice tell-tale patterns that recurred among some of the more commonly encountered symbols. It became possible over time to grasp the meaning of some of the runes left behind by previous civilisation, albeit in short fragments.

Those who first noticed the patterns, and those who joined the spontaneous project to decipher the symbols, probably felt the same thrill experienced by the archeologists who discovered the Rosetta Stone.

I'm reminded of a German acquaintance from a while back who felt that languages like Chinese would go extinct sooner than phonetic Indo-European languages. That's because he believed Chinese was too difficult to speak and write. It occurred to me only much later how wrong he was — the actual sound of the language may die out as the number of native speakers dwindle, but so long as meaning is invested in symbolic characters that do not change much over time, the language itself will endure.

I reckon that far more pre-literate Indo-European languages have died out over the centuries than Chinese itself. The dialects and spoken versions of the language may shift and evolve, but as long as the symbols are retained, it remains possible for scholars to comprehend documents written some two thousand years ago or more.

[Cosmic Eagle]

Originally Posted by Azuma Denton

But yeah, it will definitely nice if a seiyuu can produce accent of their own instead of just reading it.

NicoNico

http://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm7937965

Sorry; dynamic content not loaded. Reload?

Granted Hymnos is largely incorporated with music but point still stands

Still, I'm yet to come across a fictional language in anime that actually alludes to the lore of its setting

There's more than a few

[mystogan]

how about Zaiphon from 07-Ghost, it is some kind script magic


and music score of 14th's song from D.Gray man,the lines in the circular manner is the score for the song in the D.gray man universe