Talk:Al Bhed language

Deciphering Al Bhed section
The Final Fantasy Project voted two months ago to merge the rest of the Al Bhed trivia into the Al Bhed entry in Races of Final Fantasy. This page only exists because fictional language aficionados and cipher buffs might like to see a real life example of a simple substitution cipher. For this particular reason - emphasis on language and cipher details - I feel it is appropriate to have this section about deciphering it without the in-game only primers. Visitors to this page are likely to not be familiar with the game itself and would appreciate the historical context provided by the other infamous example of simple substitution cipher available in fiction: Holmes and the Mystery of the dancing men Renmiri 02:05, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

Linguistic constraints used in creating the cipher
Does anyone else think it's noteworthy that the substitutions of the cipher are divided into groups of letters (e.g. vowels) such that any English word remains pronouncable after translation into Al Bhed? I'm no linguist; there must be a more succinct and accurate way to describe this. Has any FFX designer or translator ever commented on the creation of the language? -- Super Aardvark 20:24, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Good point! Their work was suberb, most of the translated text resembles a true language, not gibberish. I wish I know a way to describe this in encyclopedic terms... Renmiri 17:45, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Linguist here: the letters, or rather the sounds they make are classified by their phonetic values, sonorants, fricatives, plosives, etc. What's interesting to note, and I'm currently writing a paper on this, is that the equivalent letters/sounds are not in the same level of sonorance. That is, although the letter "f" becomes "w", it isn't that same level of sonorance, BUT, in a syllable structure, the letter f is only in structures where w isn't, and doens't create any (known) violations in English syllables. In German, the letter W is pronounced as a v. It's not gibberish at all, in fact it's quite well done for a con lang that relies on orthography. — Preceding unsigned comment added by JaredVPurcell (talk • contribs) 04:02, 17 November 2021 (UTC)