I first heard about this game from Game Maker's Toolkit, so check out his video if you're considering picking it up! ruclips.net/video/PeDNuITuJPA/видео.htmlsi=A7427Kog2a_vJ6-t
Another thing I really liked: the alchemist script is stupidly cumbersome to write, EXCEPT their numbers which are incredibly efficient. "I like music" takes many circles, curves and triangles, but "three thousand five hundred ninety four" can be done in ONE quick glyph.
That moment I realized bards' "chosen one" is actually "bard" almost hits as hard as the "impure" moment. The chosen one that warriors centered their lives around is just a regular bard for another people
One small thing... the alchemists don't ask the warriors to "kill" the monster. they say they want to "help" the monster and the warriors end up helping them catch it because they want to transform it back to human - it's implied that the scientist who discovered the right formula in lab 3 accidentally turned himself into the monster (you see traces of a large explosion, giant black hand- and footprints leading into a hole in the ground... and down below is the copper mine where you had encountered the monster before. On the blackboard you see a sort of "eureka" message, saying he found the formula, which is great, but obviously had side effects). Helping it's also in the literal greeting of the first alchemist you meet in the labs: "I'm an alchemist. I help you." They seem to base their culture around being helpful, useful. About your last thought - if you connect all peoples, all connections form a triangular bipyramid on the terminals, and in the good ending it hovers above the tower in the end, turning into various directions and forms all the different symbols, plus the Exile one for the Anchorites, literally confirming what you said - it is the same, just from different perspectives.
The first alchemist actually says "Can I help you?" once I deciphered every language, which could just be a polite greeting instead, but alchemists centering their culture around helping is a nice theory too
One thing I found interesting, and something nobody else seems to be talking about, is that the triangular symbol, the one shared between all of the languages, is always an object of desire. The devotees seek god, the warriors honor and respect their duty, the bards found beauty, and the alchemists seek the transformation that will open the door, but by the end, we learn that the root of these symbols, the original, greatest desire, is the connection of the tribes of the tower.
Yeah I think there was something missed here in regards to common word - it's the same as the word exile. We see that they're all derived from the polyhedral shape rotating, symbolising the connection between each civilisation. It seems that Exile corrupted the use of this word, and instead of bringing everyone together, it made them isolationist instead, by making it the only thing each civilisation cares about. At the end they all see that they were after different facets of the same thing.
I hadn't noticed that the Warriors didn't have words for "you" and "me" until you pointed it out! I suppose I'd always mentally added them to their script: "(you) carry big crate", "(we) push cart", etc., and never caught myself doing it. That's actually really interesting because the sad plight of the Serfs in Bard society had got me thinking about the social structures of the other peoples of the Tower. The Devotees and Alchemists both have currency, and while both have labourers (e.g. the craftspeople for the Devotees, the cooks in the Alchemists' Refectory) they are presumably paid and respected (or at the very least, not called "stupid"). There are some members of Devotee society who are more hard done by (the beggar, the child), and the Preacher appears to be in overall charge, but it feels to be more akin to something modern. And it's hard to really say much about Anchorite social structure given that nearly all of them were in thrall to Exile. That leaves the Warriors. The way they give each other orders, I assumed a kind of military hierarchy at first, but other than maybe helmet designs there's not a whole lot to differentiate rank between who gives the orders and who takes them. Maybe it really is just a collective, and this Warrior has a clipboard and gives orders because *someone* has to have the clipboard and give the orders, while these warriors carry the crates because *someone* has to carry the crates. Heck, maybe they take it in turns. We only get a small window into each society at the end of the day, so who knows what they get up to the rest of the time.
That's a very good point! We do see that the Warriors worship the Bards but I doubt that the Bards send any kinds of orders down to them. I do like the idea that perhaps they don't have a hierarchy at all? None of the orders they give each other are complicated or unreasonable and they seem highly organised, so it's possible they're something like a commune. Maybe they all already know their orders because they all agree together on what needs to be done, and the clipboard guy's job is just to make sure it gets ticked off the list
it was very shocking to me how easily this game had me feel a variety of emotions. i genuinely gasped when I saw the preacher in the whole, and i thought it would have more meaning, but when I realized it simply was that the preacher was looking for a better life for his people (and seemed to be so excited for it) and instead, he died, alone in a cave. not to mention the 'bard' to 'chosen' translation, which just blew me away. ugh i love this game! i wish there were more games like this!
I know I'm about a month late Excellent video but one correction... The thing about the Alchemists telling the warriors to kill the monster is wrong. they want to "help" the monster. when you go back to the alchemist lab 1 after doing that translation, the monster is in a cage and alchemists are surrounding it with diagrams of how to make a formula to turn the monster back into a person.
Oh, interesting! I think it was the last translation I did so I was railroaded into the ending. It means that all of the translations have a pattern of having each civilisation make up for another's shortcomings
@@EphemeraEssays Also, the monster is an alchemist, turned by an experiment gone wrong - that's why lab 3 is trashed. When you know that, them wanting to help it is more obvious!
Really enjoyed this one. I wish there were more people digging into this game (I accidentally stayed up far too late after finding it). So many games treat translation as if its just a cipher over English, but this game lets each of them have grammar, implied etymologies (as you point out), utilities and class differences. They make language and translation something that's alive and something where you have to make decisions and that's SO COOL!
I find it interesting how you concluded that the half circle in worlds like instument and potion means "contain." I always read it as "object." A potion is a help object, an instument a music object, and a lens is a seeing object.
I thought it was strange that the Warriors liked music, yet they themselves didn't seem to have instruments, and their bells are only for signaling. Is it because music is something divine that can only be granted to them through the Bards?
It can be read that for the warriors, music, as series of bell sounds, are made to be functional to the collective. The bards however, make music for the sake of art itself. You can argue that they may write songs that tell fables with function to tell a story, but it's not as straightforward as "It's nighttime'/'get back to work'.
Seconding Heaven's Vault. It's a rather different game - there's only one language to figure out, but it's much more complex than any given Chants of Sennaar language. The deciphering is also 95% of the the gameplay since without it you would just have an intriguing but just kinda "visual novel-y" visual novel - beyond dialogue trees there aren't really any puzzle elements like the ones in CoS. But both games are excellent IMO, particularly if you have that "fake language" itch to scratch.
@@PaulPower4 I haven't tried Heaven's Vault yet, but I was told that the language there is fully English-based, and the game takes a lot of the guesswork out by giving you multiple choices? That wouldn't compare to the unpredictability and brain-bending in Chants I suppose
One correction: in spite of the question punctuation existing, the bards are not a philosophical bunch. It might be a hold over from when they were a people with the Alchemists, but the bards as a ruling class are complacent. Seek, bards do not. Beauty, bards have found.
each civilization has it's problems but also it's strengths the bards are complacent but are still the best psychologists on the tower the alchemists are losing their humanity to mechanistic categorization they can't process larger concepts with fuzzy boundaries.
I always found it interesting that the alchemists don't seem to have a word for "No" or "Not". They only ever focus on facts they can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt. I think that says an awful lot about them! Edit: I was partially mistaken. The word DOES exist in their language, but the day-to-day town goers never use it, only showing up in a translation stone for the Devotee language. My bad ^^
Now there are 2 more things that interested me: 1. How all the languages use SVO (2nd most common for languages) but bards just randomly decided to become Yoda 2. In history if your language was carved on stones at its begining there was a high chance your language will be written from right to left. But we never see this format even tho im certain that the Warriors started on stone (and prob devotees too)
just a theory but bards do like beautiful things and they might have thought using the same structure of the "idiot" societies is not beautiful, or just the shape of the langauge or sound of it is more beautiful this way.
No, Bards language is not always OSV. Check 2:20. What is glossed as “found, we have” is find-me-plural. In this case, there is no object, and the word order is VS. A better way to describe this word order is rheme-first. The most important part of the sentence is placed at the beginning. In English, usually the “new thing” is at the end. “I have found a key” (btw, “a” often denotes where rheme is) becomes key-me-find. But in “I have found”, it’s just find-me.
This topic reminds me of the game "Journey" where there is no chat feature. To communicate with other players, you 'honk' to other players and a single symbol representing yourself appears. Each player has a symbol and it changes with each play through. You see the sumbol for each player you met at the end of the game.
Just started watching, but thank you for the video! As someone, who studied linguistics at university I always find the topic of aritfical languages facinating. Thinking about taking a look at this topic myself sometime in future
Definitely a topic that doesn't get enough attention! I'm not super knowledgeable about languages at all, so an educated perspective would be great to hear
Honestly, I should thank you for the video! As a language lover myself, back when I was streaming this game, the things you mention here had my language senses firing all over the place - sometimes evoking an epiphany, sometimes causing an 'omg what?' moment, ultimately helping us unconsciously learn so many things about their ways of life and mentalities. You perfectly encapsulate my elated remarks - these scattered strands of realisation and understanding of their cultural dynamics - in an overarching analysis. One of my favourite things about the game (which I also talked about a lot in my stream) is that the tetrahedron represents each culture's ideal. This tells us so much about what unites them and makes them different! I really wish I could forget the game and play it again. Maybe then, I would notice the bards and slaves are different...
@@EphemeraEssays they're all up on my channel right here, if you happen to have the time! I'm normally not huge on video games (got mesmerised by this one in particular), but I love the stuff you do and the editing is class:)
The slave thing went a bit over my head too when playing. Especially that the blue masks you are supposed to hit in that game actually stands for the "idiot" working class. It only dawned on me a little when I went into the sewers and saw the rebel pamphlets and fully when making the connections between Devotees and Bards (or rather their slaves who literally said they were not men, they were not free). Devotees apparently had nothing to offer to the Bards, but they could offer sanctuary to their slaves.
While I do find the languages in Chants of Seennaar somewhat simplistic and that they mostly serve their role as pieces in a puzzle game, this game still is one of my favourites. Even if the languages aren't that complex, the whole concept of the game and the implementation is really enchanting to me and, personally, I think that the game having a simple storyline make it's core message/idea that more impactful.
Actually, since every langages glyphes have actual rules of construction, so you could make them more complex by yourself if you want. Even the game does that, as near the purple door in the bards level, there's an half destroyed devotees' glyphe for "fortress" (made up with the triangles from their word for "warrior" and the part to tell a "place" (found in their words for church or garden for exemple))
To me it seemed like the Anchorites first went into exile voluntarily, withdrawing from their creation because they didn't like what became of it when all the other peoples arrived and closed everything off. They chose to escape from reality by their VR simulations, maybe created the AI to help them (as Exile claims too), but it just spiraled out of control, and they changed their minds but by then Exile had taken control of everything already. I don't see it as evil, just following its original directive.
I really enjoyed this analisys of the game. I share many of your interpretations and insight on each culture. One particular aspect I noticed while plyaing was the fact that each society in the upper level was seen as superior; the devotees tilted their heads in presence of a warrior, warrios referred to bards as 'The chosen ones', alchemist were named by bards as monsters due to the alchemists experiment 'guarding' the inbetween, and the alchemist names the anchorites fairies for they guarded the gate and flew in the sky! Have a great day!!
The Bards didn't call the Alchemists monsters. In the play, they say the idiot bard found a monster, and on the way to the Alchemists there is a literal monster. Both the Bards and Alchemists call each other friends/brothers (or at least the Bards want to be friends with the Alchemists and not the Guards, according to the translation terminal), which seem to be the only equal footing between the nations.
@@kaygirl10101 Actually, the play says "the idiot bard, a monster found" - in normal English, "a monster found the idiot bard". And if you return to the play after making the right connection, the last line changes to "brother, the idiot bard found", with him meeting an alchemist.
@rmsgrey That also might be because they brought the tram back online, so they wouldn't have to go through the tunnels with the literal monster in them. In the translation terminal, their conversation boils down to: Bard: I want a friend. The warriors aren't friends. Alchemist: I have a book. We're friends/can be friends. Bard: Yah, we're friends/will be friends. You don't have to explain that the alchemist isn't a monster like you have to with the warrior/devotee terminal. There's no pre-conceived negative bias between them; ie no "I'm not a monster, I'm a friend". The bard wouldn't have reached out and asked for friendship if they thought the alchemists were monsters/evil/impure
@@kaygirl10101 I don't know whether it's alchemist/bard (connecting the skyway) or alchemist/warrior (trapping the monster) that changes the play's ending - I didn't go back to check until I made a sweep through the entire tower after learning the top floor's language, while I did the three connections between Alchemists and lower floors as soon as I had the words for them.
To be fair, the Anchorites don't actually do much, so there wouldn't have been much to talk about anyway. Their language is incredibly abstract and can only be understood through translations into other languages, perhaps to reflect that the Anchorites have lost touch with anything in the real world.
A very small nitpick, but at 3:12 you claim that the bards are the first people you meet who ever ask questions. This isn't true; the devotee running an instrument shop in the abbey asks you whether you make music. The native spelling is the same as if it were a statement ("You make music"), but the game translates it as a question.
I've also noticed that a door, in Devotee language, is also considered a tool. What it's a tool for is not in the game. I think each language must have many more glyphs than we ever see in the game, but we can only record the ones we see.
I loved this! I never considered how the game uses the languages itself to tell us about the various cultures. Also, about the alchemist/warrior/monster thing: {spoilers, so read at your own risk!} It's implied Exile actually sabotaged that one alchemist who found the key and turned them into the monster we get chased by. At the end of the game, you can actually find the monster in a cage, surrounded by alchemists, who are working on turning it back into a human. The warriors didn't kill the monster, they captured it.
@@berrylly I read it in some passage or other on the wiki, and assumed there was some kind of proof to back it up. I just went back into the game myself to check, but I can't seem to find anything hinting that Exile was responsible, other than the fact that an alchemist found the key to the door, and that would have been bad for Exile. Perhaps assuming Exile was responsible was a bit of a jump :(
Thank you so much for the subtitles. I'm a non native English speaker watching a video in English, about a game about diferent langues 😅. As a bilingual person, that has some time of contact with other languages and has interest on fake languages, i can confirm: it's a unique experience. Especially the non translation problems and your pessimistic opinions obout the future of the civilizations on the game: i disagree. On reality it's common we use another language terms for things we don't have a translation word. Ex: on Portuguese we use all the internet terms imported from English (internet, online, wi-fi). Or even déjà vu it's a french word for an specific feeling. I really believe that should happen in that fictional world. For example, the "impure" word used for the warriors, stop to be used to talk about the devotees, but start to use the word "devotees" that they use for themselves.
ah yeah i also missed it if you want a hint keep reading otherwise ill have some space to give you time to stop in the garden where you follow the slave into teh under passages for the first time there are mokey with little boxes that are like music box/mini stage for plays, if you give the monkeys fruits you can find on teh trees they play the box which has a number of translations such as the idiot word
Could there be a relation between the warriors lack of individualism and the populist tendencies of facism, also between the perspective of both weakness and strength of the bell master and the narrative of the enemy being both weak and strong in fascism.
Just finished the game and was blown away by the little details you pointed out. I didn't even pick up on some of these! I loved the game for how it uses language and your environment to teach you rather than tell you. You come to your own conclusions and infer a lot just about life in the tower. Will be thinking about this game a lot. Thanks for the video!
damn this video was good. Good job man, I especially enjoyed your talking points about the bard society, I honestly never really paid too much attention to them, the alchemists were by far my favorite society with their use of mathematical expressions and how their entire city was run like clockwork!
Can't believe more people haven't seen this. I guess it is a fairly niche game, but this is such an insightful and well put together video and it made me subscribe to your channel within the first minute! Keep up the great work.
actually as i recall the warriors dont intend to kill the monster they just asked to fight the monster to capture it an help it as you can see in thecentral lab if you go back after that interpretation.
I liked how the bards have a different grammar structure and talk like Yoda by starting with the last word in other languages. Really threw me off at first when I first encountered them. XD
Rather than "meaning", I would translate the beacon symbol as "connection/community". Huh. The beacon that the lower tribes depict as calling them to the tower. I hadn't made that connection that that is where they got their related word from until just now. Each saw it on the way in, before the tower fractured into different communities, and adopted it into their language, as seen from their perspective.
Spoiler alert! In the end, after you defeat Exile, and get back to the top of the tower, the "connections" cou make by translating the conversations spins around to make the glyphs for: God, duty, beauty, transformation. It does actualy add to the common word of, meaning.
8:00 They don't kill the monster... They want to help the alchemist that found the transmutation formula and turned into a monster, when you ask them for help you can find them in lab 1 with the caged monster and alchemists attempting to find the formula to turn him back. You can only get to the last floor because that alchemist found the formula, the monster opened the door for you. But that's off-topic. On-topic though: You're not reinforcing a word, you are showing them what a real monster looks like, which in turn would make them see the other peoples as humans.
your word is "constructed languages , conlang". They tend to be more than cypher/font replacement. They always are visual storytelling, even if they are mostly gibberish.
I was really confused by the idiot drawing, bc when they say "no you are no warrior, warriors carry wapons, warriors are idiots" I thought the last part was "you are a servant of the warriors", bc of the playbox tht said "idiot carry saw"
I first heard about this game from Game Maker's Toolkit, so check out his video if you're considering picking it up! ruclips.net/video/PeDNuITuJPA/видео.htmlsi=A7427Kog2a_vJ6-t
Another thing I really liked: the alchemist script is stupidly cumbersome to write, EXCEPT their numbers which are incredibly efficient. "I like music" takes many circles, curves and triangles, but "three thousand five hundred ninety four" can be done in ONE quick glyph.
alchis don't even have music, they just work
this is great but our language is pretty good at that too! "i like music" has many more characters than "3594"!
That moment I realized bards' "chosen one" is actually "bard" almost hits as hard as the "impure" moment. The chosen one that warriors centered their lives around is just a regular bard for another people
And then the fairies. The fairies broke me
One small thing... the alchemists don't ask the warriors to "kill" the monster. they say they want to "help" the monster and the warriors end up helping them catch it because they want to transform it back to human - it's implied that the scientist who discovered the right formula in lab 3 accidentally turned himself into the monster (you see traces of a large explosion, giant black hand- and footprints leading into a hole in the ground... and down below is the copper mine where you had encountered the monster before. On the blackboard you see a sort of "eureka" message, saying he found the formula, which is great, but obviously had side effects).
Helping it's also in the literal greeting of the first alchemist you meet in the labs: "I'm an alchemist. I help you." They seem to base their culture around being helpful, useful.
About your last thought - if you connect all peoples, all connections form a triangular bipyramid on the terminals, and in the good ending it hovers above the tower in the end, turning into various directions and forms all the different symbols, plus the Exile one for the Anchorites, literally confirming what you said - it is the same, just from different perspectives.
He found the wrong transformation.
@@elmerthiendoesgames9061 ouf
@@elmerthiendoesgames9061 He found transmutation, but it exploded on his face.
Exile only has that symbol because it was their symbol for connection and exile is their internet.
The first alchemist actually says "Can I help you?" once I deciphered every language, which could just be a polite greeting instead, but alchemists centering their culture around helping is a nice theory too
One thing I found interesting, and something nobody else seems to be talking about, is that the triangular symbol, the one shared between all of the languages, is always an object of desire. The devotees seek god, the warriors honor and respect their duty, the bards found beauty, and the alchemists seek the transformation that will open the door, but by the end, we learn that the root of these symbols, the original, greatest desire, is the connection of the tribes of the tower.
Yeah I think there was something missed here in regards to common word - it's the same as the word exile. We see that they're all derived from the polyhedral shape rotating, symbolising the connection between each civilisation.
It seems that Exile corrupted the use of this word, and instead of bringing everyone together, it made them isolationist instead, by making it the only thing each civilisation cares about.
At the end they all see that they were after different facets of the same thing.
holy flipping crip
I hadn't noticed that the Warriors didn't have words for "you" and "me" until you pointed it out! I suppose I'd always mentally added them to their script: "(you) carry big crate", "(we) push cart", etc., and never caught myself doing it.
That's actually really interesting because the sad plight of the Serfs in Bard society had got me thinking about the social structures of the other peoples of the Tower. The Devotees and Alchemists both have currency, and while both have labourers (e.g. the craftspeople for the Devotees, the cooks in the Alchemists' Refectory) they are presumably paid and respected (or at the very least, not called "stupid"). There are some members of Devotee society who are more hard done by (the beggar, the child), and the Preacher appears to be in overall charge, but it feels to be more akin to something modern. And it's hard to really say much about Anchorite social structure given that nearly all of them were in thrall to Exile.
That leaves the Warriors. The way they give each other orders, I assumed a kind of military hierarchy at first, but other than maybe helmet designs there's not a whole lot to differentiate rank between who gives the orders and who takes them. Maybe it really is just a collective, and this Warrior has a clipboard and gives orders because *someone* has to have the clipboard and give the orders, while these warriors carry the crates because *someone* has to carry the crates. Heck, maybe they take it in turns. We only get a small window into each society at the end of the day, so who knows what they get up to the rest of the time.
That's a very good point! We do see that the Warriors worship the Bards but I doubt that the Bards send any kinds of orders down to them.
I do like the idea that perhaps they don't have a hierarchy at all? None of the orders they give each other are complicated or unreasonable and they seem highly organised, so it's possible they're something like a commune. Maybe they all already know their orders because they all agree together on what needs to be done, and the clipboard guy's job is just to make sure it gets ticked off the list
it was very shocking to me how easily this game had me feel a variety of emotions. i genuinely gasped when I saw the preacher in the whole, and i thought it would have more meaning, but when I realized it simply was that the preacher was looking for a better life for his people (and seemed to be so excited for it) and instead, he died, alone in a cave.
not to mention the 'bard' to 'chosen' translation, which just blew me away.
ugh i love this game! i wish there were more games like this!
I know I'm about a month late Excellent video but one correction... The thing about the Alchemists telling the warriors to kill the monster is wrong. they want to "help" the monster. when you go back to the alchemist lab 1 after doing that translation, the monster is in a cage and alchemists are surrounding it with diagrams of how to make a formula to turn the monster back into a person.
Oh, interesting! I think it was the last translation I did so I was railroaded into the ending. It means that all of the translations have a pattern of having each civilisation make up for another's shortcomings
@@EphemeraEssays Also, the monster is an alchemist, turned by an experiment gone wrong - that's why lab 3 is trashed. When you know that, them wanting to help it is more obvious!
@@berrylly Guess he found the formula of the key but actually got cursed ironically enough.
Really enjoyed this one. I wish there were more people digging into this game (I accidentally stayed up far too late after finding it). So many games treat translation as if its just a cipher over English, but this game lets each of them have grammar, implied etymologies (as you point out), utilities and class differences. They make language and translation something that's alive and something where you have to make decisions and that's SO COOL!
I find it interesting how you concluded that the half circle in worlds like instument and potion means "contain." I always read it as "object." A potion is a help object, an instument a music object, and a lens is a seeing object.
That's a good interpretation too!
I thought it was strange that the Warriors liked music, yet they themselves didn't seem to have instruments, and their bells are only for signaling. Is it because music is something divine that can only be granted to them through the Bards?
it seems so, they do call barbs the chosen ones for a reason.
It can be read that for the warriors, music, as series of bell sounds, are made to be functional to the collective. The bards however, make music for the sake of art itself. You can argue that they may write songs that tell fables with function to tell a story, but it's not as straightforward as "It's nighttime'/'get back to work'.
Need more games that play around with languages
There's Heaven's Vault which is far more language focused
Seconding Heaven's Vault. It's a rather different game - there's only one language to figure out, but it's much more complex than any given Chants of Sennaar language. The deciphering is also 95% of the the gameplay since without it you would just have an intriguing but just kinda "visual novel-y" visual novel - beyond dialogue trees there aren't really any puzzle elements like the ones in CoS. But both games are excellent IMO, particularly if you have that "fake language" itch to scratch.
@@PaulPower4 I haven't tried Heaven's Vault yet, but I was told that the language there is fully English-based, and the game takes a lot of the guesswork out by giving you multiple choices? That wouldn't compare to the unpredictability and brain-bending in Chants I suppose
One correction: in spite of the question punctuation existing, the bards are not a philosophical bunch. It might be a hold over from when they were a people with the Alchemists, but the bards as a ruling class are complacent. Seek, bards do not. Beauty, bards have found.
each civilization has it's problems but also it's strengths the bards are complacent but are still the best psychologists on the tower the alchemists are losing their humanity to mechanistic categorization they can't process larger concepts with fuzzy boundaries.
I always found it interesting that the alchemists don't seem to have a word for "No" or "Not". They only ever focus on facts they can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt. I think that says an awful lot about them!
Edit: I was partially mistaken. The word DOES exist in their language, but the day-to-day town goers never use it, only showing up in a translation stone for the Devotee language. My bad ^^
Now there are 2 more things that interested me:
1. How all the languages use SVO (2nd most common for languages) but bards just randomly decided to become Yoda
2. In history if your language was carved on stones at its begining there was a high chance your language will be written from right to left. But we never see this format even tho im certain that the Warriors started on stone (and prob devotees too)
I am pretty sure devotees started with a simple charcoal to write. It explains fairly big curves. Maybe currently they're using some kind of paint.
just a theory but bards do like beautiful things and they might have thought using the same structure of the "idiot" societies is not beautiful, or just the shape of the langauge or sound of it is more beautiful this way.
No, Bards language is not always OSV.
Check 2:20. What is glossed as “found, we have” is find-me-plural. In this case, there is no object, and the word order is VS.
A better way to describe this word order is rheme-first. The most important part of the sentence is placed at the beginning.
In English, usually the “new thing” is at the end. “I have found a key” (btw, “a” often denotes where rheme is) becomes key-me-find. But in “I have found”, it’s just find-me.
This topic reminds me of the game "Journey" where there is no chat feature. To communicate with other players, you 'honk' to other players and a single symbol representing yourself appears. Each player has a symbol and it changes with each play through. You see the sumbol for each player you met at the end of the game.
Just started watching, but thank you for the video! As someone, who studied linguistics at university I always find the topic of aritfical languages facinating. Thinking about taking a look at this topic myself sometime in future
Definitely a topic that doesn't get enough attention! I'm not super knowledgeable about languages at all, so an educated perspective would be great to hear
Honestly, I should thank you for the video! As a language lover myself, back when I was streaming this game, the things you mention here had my language senses firing all over the place - sometimes evoking an epiphany, sometimes causing an 'omg what?' moment, ultimately helping us unconsciously learn so many things about their ways of life and mentalities. You perfectly encapsulate my elated remarks - these scattered strands of realisation and understanding of their cultural dynamics - in an overarching analysis.
One of my favourite things about the game (which I also talked about a lot in my stream) is that the tetrahedron represents each culture's ideal. This tells us so much about what unites them and makes them different!
I really wish I could forget the game and play it again. Maybe then, I would notice the bards and slaves are different...
Thank you for the kind words! Would love to check out your stream and see your thoughts on it, is there a VOD? 👀
@@EphemeraEssays they're all up on my channel right here, if you happen to have the time! I'm normally not huge on video games (got mesmerised by this one in particular), but I love the stuff you do and the editing is class:)
The slave thing went a bit over my head too when playing. Especially that the blue masks you are supposed to hit in that game actually stands for the "idiot" working class.
It only dawned on me a little when I went into the sewers and saw the rebel pamphlets and fully when making the connections between Devotees and Bards (or rather their slaves who literally said they were not men, they were not free). Devotees apparently had nothing to offer to the Bards, but they could offer sanctuary to their slaves.
While I do find the languages in Chants of Seennaar somewhat simplistic and that they mostly serve their role as pieces in a puzzle game, this game still is one of my favourites. Even if the languages aren't that complex, the whole concept of the game and the implementation is really enchanting to me and, personally, I think that the game having a simple storyline make it's core message/idea that more impactful.
Actually, since every langages glyphes have actual rules of construction, so you could make them more complex by yourself if you want. Even the game does that, as near the purple door in the bards level, there's an half destroyed devotees' glyphe for "fortress" (made up with the triangles from their word for "warrior" and the part to tell a "place" (found in their words for church or garden for exemple))
we're gonna need a part 2 covering the Anchorites and the meaning of their "meaning"!
To me it seemed like the Anchorites first went into exile voluntarily, withdrawing from their creation because they didn't like what became of it when all the other peoples arrived and closed everything off. They chose to escape from reality by their VR simulations, maybe created the AI to help them (as Exile claims too), but it just spiraled out of control, and they changed their minds but by then Exile had taken control of everything already. I don't see it as evil, just following its original directive.
Their meaning was exile
@@jacobthompson1209 Iplayed the gane, I knew that. Doesn't mean I don't want a video on it
I really enjoyed this analisys of the game. I share many of your interpretations and insight on each culture.
One particular aspect I noticed while plyaing was the fact that each society in the upper level was seen as superior; the devotees tilted their heads in presence of a warrior, warrios referred to bards as 'The chosen ones', alchemist were named by bards as monsters due to the alchemists experiment 'guarding' the inbetween, and the alchemist names the anchorites fairies for they guarded the gate and flew in the sky!
Have a great day!!
The Bards didn't call the Alchemists monsters. In the play, they say the idiot bard found a monster, and on the way to the Alchemists there is a literal monster. Both the Bards and Alchemists call each other friends/brothers (or at least the Bards want to be friends with the Alchemists and not the Guards, according to the translation terminal), which seem to be the only equal footing between the nations.
@@kaygirl10101 Actually, the play says "the idiot bard, a monster found" - in normal English, "a monster found the idiot bard".
And if you return to the play after making the right connection, the last line changes to "brother, the idiot bard found", with him meeting an alchemist.
@rmsgrey That also might be because they brought the tram back online, so they wouldn't have to go through the tunnels with the literal monster in them.
In the translation terminal, their conversation boils down to:
Bard: I want a friend. The warriors aren't friends.
Alchemist: I have a book. We're friends/can be friends.
Bard: Yah, we're friends/will be friends.
You don't have to explain that the alchemist isn't a monster like you have to with the warrior/devotee terminal. There's no pre-conceived negative bias between them; ie no "I'm not a monster, I'm a friend". The bard wouldn't have reached out and asked for friendship if they thought the alchemists were monsters/evil/impure
@@kaygirl10101 I don't know whether it's alchemist/bard (connecting the skyway) or alchemist/warrior (trapping the monster) that changes the play's ending - I didn't go back to check until I made a sweep through the entire tower after learning the top floor's language, while I did the three connections between Alchemists and lower floors as soon as I had the words for them.
@@rmsgreyAll possible connections need to be made to unlock the final ending, I'm pretty sure.
NOOOOO YOU SKIPPED THE ANCHORITES 😢😢😢😢😢
I didn't want to give the whole game away! 😉
To be fair, the Anchorites don't actually do much, so there wouldn't have been much to talk about anyway. Their language is incredibly abstract and can only be understood through translations into other languages, perhaps to reflect that the Anchorites have lost touch with anything in the real world.
A very small nitpick, but at 3:12 you claim that the bards are the first people you meet who ever ask questions. This isn't true; the devotee running an instrument shop in the abbey asks you whether you make music. The native spelling is the same as if it were a statement ("You make music"), but the game translates it as a question.
Maybe he was just confused?
this channel is sooo underrated
I'd say the bracket in the Devotee language means a tool. A key isn't exactly a container for opening.
I think what I meant to say was that these things "contain the potential" to do X. But you're right, a tool would have been a better word for it!
I've also noticed that a door, in Devotee language, is also considered a tool. What it's a tool for is not in the game. I think each language must have many more glyphs than we ever see in the game, but we can only record the ones we see.
I loved this! I never considered how the game uses the languages itself to tell us about the various cultures.
Also, about the alchemist/warrior/monster thing: {spoilers, so read at your own risk!}
It's implied Exile actually sabotaged that one alchemist who found the key and turned them into the monster we get chased by. At the end of the game, you can actually find the monster in a cage, surrounded by alchemists, who are working on turning it back into a human. The warriors didn't kill the monster, they captured it.
Exile sabotaged the alchemist?! If so that's really cool. Where do you see that?
@@berrylly I read it in some passage or other on the wiki, and assumed there was some kind of proof to back it up. I just went back into the game myself to check, but I can't seem to find anything hinting that Exile was responsible, other than the fact that an alchemist found the key to the door, and that would have been bad for Exile. Perhaps assuming Exile was responsible was a bit of a jump :(
Thank you so much for the subtitles. I'm a non native English speaker watching a video in English, about a game about diferent langues 😅.
As a bilingual person, that has some time of contact with other languages and has interest on fake languages, i can confirm: it's a unique experience.
Especially the non translation problems and your pessimistic opinions obout the future of the civilizations on the game: i disagree. On reality it's common we use another language terms for things we don't have a translation word. Ex: on Portuguese we use all the internet terms imported from English (internet, online, wi-fi). Or even déjà vu it's a french word for an specific feeling.
I really believe that should happen in that fictional world. For example, the "impure" word used for the warriors, stop to be used to talk about the devotees, but start to use the word "devotees" that they use for themselves.
Thanks for pointing out some things I never noticed before. Also, the God glyph is the one used for connection between all of them. Quite neat!
Just now I found out the bards were calling me idiot. That's hilarious.
Don't know where we would translate that lol
ah yeah i also missed it if you want a hint keep reading otherwise ill have some space to give you time to stop
in the garden where you follow the slave into teh under passages for the first time there are mokey with little boxes that are like music box/mini stage for plays, if you give the monkeys fruits you can find on teh trees they play the box which has a number of translations such as the idiot word
Could there be a relation between the warriors lack of individualism and the populist tendencies of facism, also between the perspective of both weakness and strength of the bell master and the narrative of the enemy being both weak and strong in fascism.
I would like to know more about the top floor, they also have a unique language and a unique way of learning it.
Just finished the game and was blown away by the little details you pointed out. I didn't even pick up on some of these! I loved the game for how it uses language and your environment to teach you rather than tell you. You come to your own conclusions and infer a lot just about life in the tower. Will be thinking about this game a lot. Thanks for the video!
Glad you enjoyed!
I liked the game and you analysis, I didn't pick up on many little quirks you mentions
I thought the implied worldbuilding throughout this game was very interesting, happy to see a video about it - subscribed :)
This game was incredible and this video explains it so well!
damn this video was good. Good job man, I especially enjoyed your talking points about the bard society, I honestly never really paid too much attention to them, the alchemists were by far my favorite society with their use of mathematical expressions and how their entire city was run like clockwork!
Can't believe more people haven't seen this. I guess it is a fairly niche game, but this is such an insightful and well put together video and it made me subscribe to your channel within the first minute! Keep up the great work.
BEST. VIDEO. EVER.
Great video
actually as i recall the warriors dont intend to kill the monster they just asked to fight the monster to capture it an help it as you can see in thecentral lab if you go back after that interpretation.
Such a Great Video! ❤
I liked how the bards have a different grammar structure and talk like Yoda by starting with the last word in other languages.
Really threw me off at first when I first encountered them. XD
I love Chants of Sennaar and this was a beautifull video, i enjoyed it very much.
It also made me think more about these languages, it was very cool.
Great video about a game I have fallen in love with. Please make more.
Rather than "meaning", I would translate the beacon symbol as "connection/community".
Huh. The beacon that the lower tribes depict as calling them to the tower. I hadn't made that connection that that is where they got their related word from until just now. Each saw it on the way in, before the tower fractured into different communities, and adopted it into their language, as seen from their perspective.
Spoiler alert!
In the end, after you defeat Exile, and get back to the top of the tower, the "connections" cou make by translating the conversations spins around to make the glyphs for: God, duty, beauty, transformation. It does actualy add to the common word of, meaning.
8:00 They don't kill the monster... They want to help the alchemist that found the transmutation formula and turned into a monster, when you ask them for help you can find them in lab 1 with the caged monster and alchemists attempting to find the formula to turn him back. You can only get to the last floor because that alchemist found the formula, the monster opened the door for you.
But that's off-topic.
On-topic though: You're not reinforcing a word, you are showing them what a real monster looks like, which in turn would make them see the other peoples as humans.
Thank you
your word is "constructed languages , conlang".
They tend to be more than cypher/font replacement.
They always are visual storytelling, even if they are mostly gibberish.
Minecraft villager language HRRRRRR??? game theory translate? voltz
the way you call them "fake languages" and not "conlangs" or "constructed languages" says a lot
I was really confused by the idiot drawing, bc when they say "no you are no warrior, warriors carry wapons, warriors are idiots" I thought the last part was "you are a servant of the warriors", bc of the playbox tht said "idiot carry saw"
Is your patreon Dušan slovenian?
søslag
Love how the Anchorites are never mentioned because they suck.
I know this whole video is a spoiler, but I'm still not sure how I feel about you spoiling the ending of the game. Otherwise this was a great video