They say that to destroy an enemy, you should understand them as they do. Beyond tactics and arsenal, beyond the mask and the smoke: what motivates them? Their desires, beliefs, frustrations. Fire may win battles, but knowledge can end war.
Words cannot describe how amazed I am by the effort and devotion of the author of this Errata and his colleagues.
FANTASTIC work, almost impeccable logic, but I wonder: what if Bungie simply used sounds that seem cool, guttural and alien with no real meaning or consistency?
That would be unfortunate but I can still completely respect the work that went into this translation!
I couldnāt help but notice that there is some Latin roots in Eliskni. Iād be interested to know what languages Bungie morphed together to make Eliksni.
OK so first I gotta say great job and now I ask if you can put ur linguistic skills to translate what the fallen captain says in the quest enemy of my enemy data acquisition
I gave it a go and put my ideas up on the transcript postā¦ mostly using the handy list given in the original Errata postā¦ anyway my thoughts lean towards this as a rough translation if the reading of my post is too much:
"[We] will have to go, their ācourageā brings death and destruction"
Cabal language would be grunts, Vex language would be electronic shrieks, and the Hive would be screams.
Until we get a friendly member of each race, like Variks, who provided a baseline to translate from, we know nothing of how their language works. Now if only Ghaul or the Consul or even Calus swore a Cabal curse then we can jumpstart the Cabal language.
EDIT: I hate my phone. It keeps wanting to correct Cabal to Canal. And, the horror, it even changed āCalus sworeā to āValue swordā. I caught the mistake, but really Android, you canāt even get that one right?
Might be able to get some of the Hive runes, there is reference in both D1 and D2 to some symbolās meaningsā¦ we also have a countdown of sorts in the witches ritual public event on titan.
This is gonna take some time to research screen grabs and transcripts.
Listening to the original Skolas line you analysed multiple times there is a definite hint of an āLā sound at the end of the word you concluded to be āgeā. That would make the word āgelā. I donāt belief that it is much of a logical step to change it to āKellā, meaning King; similar to the German, Russian and English words for King (Kaiser, Tsar and King respectively). Kell is obviously suppose to be a direct transfer of words from Eliksni language to use by Guardians. I hope you take this into consideration as it would simplify the term greatly.
I know my account is new here, but I have been a close observer of the Ishtar Collective since its early days.
Has anyone dove into translating the āEnemy of my Enemyā quest ending? For those who donāt know, itās the methane reactor quest on Titan. If you both free Mithrax the Forsaken (the Fallen Captain with the golden armor), and only kill Golthor the Subtle (the Hive knight) he is fighting at the reactor then Mithrax will speak to you in Eliksni, then teleport out, effectively giving you the methane reactor he was also searching for.
Whatever message he was trying to deliver to us seems incredibly important for illuminating what the House of Dusk, Variks, and Uldren are up to. Hope this sparks a new line of inquiry!
If you run the audio from skolas during the mission where you chase him through the ishtar sink, and the audio from the captain talking in enemy of my enemy, they say the exact same thing. Iām not sure what this means lore wise, because skolas was rallying the fallen with a speech of sorts, while the captain is giving/gifting you the reactor. Iāve seen a video where this dude translates and the most sense it makes to me is that the captain is saying something along the lines of āThe guardians arenāt using the gift correctlyā
Itās unlikely bungie hired a linguist to create a new language, more like they borrowed and made stuff up they thought sounded coolā¦ making translation difficult
There already is an Errata post about the Hive language. Itās less vocally oriented than the Fallen Language post, but it does synthesize a lot of information.