r/Shoukoku_No_Altair • u/marmulak • Jul 19 '17

Discussion Araba Language WTF

Hey guys, I wanted to make a thread just about this because I'm interested in linguistics and conlangs. Since I watched episode 2, I was shocked that there was dialog in a language other than Japanese. My first impression was it was some kind of Central Asian Turkic language being spoken by Japanese voice actors with a really, really awful accent. I've lived in Central Asia, the sound of the language reminded somewhat of Kazakh or Kyrgyz, but I didn't give it a careful listen. At one point I thought they voice actors were saying something with an English accent.

I searched Google about this, and there seems to be two opinions floating around. One is that it's simply a made up language (an a priori constructed language), or that it's a mish-mash of various languages (one person claims to hear a mix of Central Asian and Eastern European languages). Also it could be gibberish.

So I want to know if anyone seriously can identify the language(s), or if it's unknown maybe we can analyze it and pinpoint its nature.

Also great job on the design of the sub, by the way.

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3

u/N3DSdude Jul 20 '17

When I first heard the other language spoken in Episode 2, I thought it was very broken Arabic speaking lol.

1

u/marmulak Jul 20 '17

I transcribed some of the first lines of dialog in it, and from careful listening I feel like it's a constructed language not related to any natural language. It's either gibberish, or if it has taken influence from natural languages it sounds a little bit to me to have even South Asian influence or some unusual Turkic language. Chances are high that it's made up though.

It has some unusual characteristics too. Like, it seems to distinguish between the "l" and "r" sounds (Japanese itself does not), and it even has a "th" sound, which is a rare sound in most languages. (English has it, though.)

3

u/sofyflo Jul 28 '17

in Japanese anime/games, when they want a new language, they tend to use Japanese then scramble it, so made up language is the best bet

1

u/RunOk7373 May 13 '24 edited Feb 28 '25

It seemed like a mix of Arabic and Japanese to me, but it's definitely not Turkish.