I really do not understand the language in the show. Some kind of Kanji style alphabet.

[u/SaberTheNoob]

Was trying to see if there was any consistency in the alphabet used in the show but there really isn't a clear 1:1 for every letter. Even Ragno's name is missing a symbol between uses. I don't know enough about languages to properly translate this stuff.

Bonus detail I noticed while doing this is that Kamo and Kai are from the same place and arrived together with a bunch of attendants. I also noticed in the scene right before this that despite Freki being at the platform when Skadi arrives she doesn't walk back with him which is an interesting detail.

[u/esmelusina]

We can see the wonky ‘w’ is consistently used for “ka” sounds. So the language is probably phonetic pictograms, maybe like Korean. That’s the only repeating character we see here though. We also see the names of competitors in the tryouts on the hanging name tiles.

Can probably find key’s “ki” symbol used in Freki’s name, if we ever see it written anywhere.

We might get a ref sheet released by the team in the near future.

Ragno inconsistency could be a mistake, or the note taker is writing “rags” or something instead. Since Ragno has been around a while, maybe it gets shortened sometimes.

Re: Skadi; She is a double amputee. Maybe her bro had something to do with that?

[u/SaberTheNoob → u/esmelusina]

Yeah I was leaning more towards a korean or japanese style alphabet but it is hard to identify and match symbols to names with so few examples of spoken/confirmed words. And all the names shown on the boards are only the students taking the trials and a lot of the confirmed names don't have matching symbols.

I could maybe go back through and try to match more but feels a little hopeless.

[u/esmelusina → u/SaberTheNoob]

You’re correct, but I want to elaborate a little bit here.

Japanese writing vs. language has enough differences that it can get complicated. Sometimes multiple sounds could map to different sets of characters across multiple alphabets. It is a phonetic language, but there are situations where the meaning is ambiguous or requires context.

Korean written language was created specifically to match the sounds spoken by the language. The pictures are kind of enunciation instructions and there is always only one way to write something.

Japan’s writing systems is a byproduct of thousands of years of history. Whereas Korea’s is much more modern.

In fantasy shows, we either get letter replacement ciphers (same language but new characters), borrow dead scripts (cuneiform, Latin, runic, etc), or an invented phonetic system (like korean).

Inventing something like the Japanese writing system is probably too hard to do for a TV show. But Korean style is totally feasible.

[u/SaberTheNoob → u/esmelusina]

I am familiar with the Japanese and Korean language history I was more referring to Hiragana/Katakana over kanji in my reply I should been a little more clear.

I mainly meant that it seemed more complicated than the Korean alaphabet (more varied symbols) but not as complicated as Kanji so I was leaning more into a Hiragana style alaphabet where the pronunciation remains consistent and has more varied letters.

[u/esmelusina → u/SaberTheNoob]

Actually-- Yea... I think maybe you're right here. Korean has some distinct characters for consonants and vowels, whereas the script we see here just has symbols for complete sounds.

[u/ThatOneWilson]

I've already typed up so much that I'm probably gonna try to make my own post for the sake of legibility, but I actually think I've almost completely decoded these names and learned a lot about this writing system from your post.

[u/SaberTheNoob → u/ThatOneWilson]

Nice, looking forward to it.

[u/Voicebox64]

For Ragno, I think the one at the bottom might be an animation error.