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.
Awesome! I’ve been waiting for this.
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!
@Sarsion, that was such an amazing post! I wouldn’t be surprised if you became a linguist.
This is right up my alley. I love lore and languages in destiny.
Oh. My. God.
This is amazing! You guys have torn down a freaking gigantic wall here! Thank you so much for all of your hard work!
I loved this.
I couldn’t help but notice that there is some Latin roots in Eliskni. I’d be interested to know what languages Bungie morphed together to make Eliksni.
Now I’m left wondering whether there are also Vex, Cabal and Hive languages too!
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 post… mostly using the handy list given in the original Errata post… 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 ‘courage’ brings death and destruction"
Could You also make a Cabal, Vex, and hive Language
great job dude, i love all the effort you put into your work and research.
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 “Calus swore” to “Value sword”. I caught the mistake, but really Android, you can’t 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 symbol’s meanings… 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 ‘L’ sound at the end of the word you concluded to be “ge”. That would make the word “gel”. I don’t belief that it is much of a logical step to change it to “Kell”, 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.
funny enough skolas says the same thing…
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 “Enemy of my Enemy” quest ending? For those who don’t know, it’s 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. I’m 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. I’ve 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 “The guardians aren’t using the gift correctly”
Hope this helps and sorry for no links
It’s unlikely bungie hired a linguist to create a new language, more like they borrowed and made stuff up they thought sounded cool… making translation difficult
There already is an Errata post about the Hive language. It’s less vocally oriented than the Fallen Language post, but it does synthesize a lot of information.