The spoken Chozo language fascinated me ever since I witnessed the cutscene with Quiet Robe. I noticed repeat words and noticed that the Chozo language was not complete gibberish. It has all five main structures of a language: morphology, phonology, syntax, phonetics and semantics. Props to MercurySteam for doing their research when creating this language and making it sound authentic.
Linguistics nerds unite! I actually scrubbed through the entire conversation with Quiet Robe and parsed out every individual word (to the best of my ability). I need help.
It most likely is just an English cipher like Klingon is for star trek. It uses totally different sounds and words but maps 1 to 1 with English, rather than being a unique language with a unique design. Chozo is as much of a language as piglatin is.
@@Commander034 I can confirm this is the case but with a couple changes (namely that nouns don’t reflect number and verbs lack any kind of conjugation; also there are only possessive forms for the pronouns, while nouns and proper nouns require an “of” structure to show possession. The only place the Chozo cypher differs in wording from the English subtitles is when it says “Raven Beak’s plan,” while the Chozo says “the plan of Raven Beak”).
@@previllion5355 These changes are likely just to lengthen the sentences so they sound more complex. Notably Japanese possiveness is similar and a Nintendo affiliated artist is likely at least casually familiar with that. What exists of Chozo likely leaves it incomplete and nonfunctional as a language.
I genuinely love how Metroid dread hasn't even been out for a week and the fanbase has already collectively almost completed the translation of a brand new language that has first appeared in it... the collective efforts of people who truly enjoy and care about something-- it's just amazing what you can accomplish when many people genuinely care
The text on the loading screen seems to be "chado" which might mean "loading" or "wait" or so. It's also spinning around the morph ball symbol in the same screen.
So going by this, the control console Quiet Robe was using seems to have the following on its display: EMMI GIMEVEW HARES SAGARNA NAMUR WEVIMA TURA TEBOVEN METROID DIM SAMUS SUTANWA MUVUI I'm fairly certain that at one point Quiet Robe says "teboven ili metroid dim", which based on the subtitles would make teboven "extract" and dim "dna". I suspect that tura could mean "kill". Which then leads me to suspect that wevima could be something like "capture" (or maybe "pursue"). I think that section lays out the program directives for the EMMI. When Quiet Robe activates the EMMI, he taps NAMUR, HARES, GIMEVEW, so these could be words that identify command buttons. The glyphs that Samus finds before meeting Quiet Robe seems to be separated into three parts, though it's kinda hard to make out completely clearly. On the left: HADAR SEN OLMEN. To the right looks like: URA MENWE URAMAHAR TURUWI NUPHA. Then at the bottom looks like: ILI MUHAI NINTA URA. Based on the images accompanying these words, it's possible that TURA and TURUWI relate in some way like "kill" and "killed" or "killing". It will be very interesting once we're able to decipher all these messages throughout the game.
i wanted to add that the word after "dim" (DNA) translates to SAMUS which can obviously be confirmed by the promotional stuff. also there an unofficial transcript i found of quiet robe's monologue where he says the word for "extract" and it essentially matches the screen he clicks on to turn the EMMI off. in that same transcript URAMAHAR is said to be "our" and URA meaning "we" which does make sense seeing as our is a plural possessive (both containing "URA")
@@skylarrae thanks for that additional info! To me, that seems to suggest that Chozo make no distinction between "we" and "us", and URA can mean either, based on context. Instinctively, this leads me to believe that URA MENWE URAMAHAR TURUWI NUPHA could mean something along the lines of "we met our deaths here". And then that line at the bottom is where they talk about what "the 'something' _______ us."
@@shannonjones8877 yes that's exactly what i was thinking! i even think it could be from the perspective of the Mawkin, something about what they did to the Thoha, considering that HADAR SEN OLMEN is the text next to the depiction of Raven Beak and the mural is located on ZDR afterall, where the Mawkin have resided. i just wish we had more similar words to go off of in game because this is so fascinating lol.
@Shannon Jones NAMUR, HARES, and GIMEVEW might be referring to the three remaining EMMI at that point in the game. When he activates those EMMI the blue, purple, and brown. The names you translated might mean those 3 colors or perhaps Ferenia, Gavoran, and Hanubia.
Very likely the text in Dread is all written in Mawkin dialects, what runes and script are found in Chozodia, the Tallon ruins, and the SR-388 ruins are different.
This is a great observation that i didnt catch, i dont think this translation is entirely correct or that the words in the game don't translate to english bit chozo which would make sense, but make translation much more difficult. I wanna crack this!
We found out something interesting. Samus Returns/Other M/Zero Mission/Prime2 feature quadratic Chozo Letters, if you compare them to Dreads triangular ones you actually see that they are the same structure. It’s like comparing english letters from 100-200 years ago to the new ones. The letters in dread aren’t a different alphabet, they are a newer font!!! The letters in Prime 1 and Prime 3 though have nothing in common with the ones from Dread/ZM/OM/SR though
@@theakiwar9118 it always seemed to me that the Tallon IV chozo weren't related to the zebes chozo as the Tallon IV chozo where kind of like space Amish (in that the left the technological lifestyle behind to be closer to nature.) This could mean there are now 3 known tribes. It is also possible that the Thoha tribe isn't the zebes tribe. That would make 4 known tribes.
Metroid fusion, Zero Mission, Other M, Samus returns, and Dread were not made with the prime games in mind. Just keep that in mind before trying to make lore connections. You might just have to suspend your disbelief.
And when he mentions Raven beak, it sounds like 'Ashkar Behek'. I also noticed the way he pronounces 'Thoha'. Still haven't figured out how he refers to himself upon his introduction though...
@@m.s.5370 I figured the ‘Raven’ in Raven Beak was a tangential translation considering Chozo probably don’t even have ravens on any of their planets. Ashkar is probably the name of an alien bird, similar to a Raven. That’s really cool. Also Ashkar is a good name, we can call him Ash for short.
@@solomon9655 Raven is also a shade of black and, in one of the gallery art pieces unlocked upon completion of the game, Raven Beak is seen outside his armor and his beak is...about raven black. So, whatever Chozo word is used in Raven Beak's name is probably in reference to a color we conveniently named after a dope bird on our planet and it is too tempting to not translate it as such.
Really cool with the alphabet, language actually being consistent aswell as the overall lore and design of the game Dread tied it all together in the end!
What really helps is that the language is completely English in grammar and sentence structure. You can literally translate it word for word from English to Chozo, back and forth. The only difference is the planet names. Other games have done this before, like Zelda where the writing is either directly translatable to Japanese or English, but I think it's a first for Nintendo where they created a spoken language along with writing. No I don't count Zelda's singing in Skyward Sword, it's gibberish. Same for the language in Starfox Adventures. What I also really like is how the two Chozo tribes are different types of birds. The Mawkin look very crow-like, Raven Beak being a dead giveaway but the other soldiers look very similar. Not sure what the Thoha are but they all have short, wide beaks. Older depictions made them look like falcons, but Quiet Robe doesn't give me that vibe. Maybe a slight retcon, Chozo were always just Chozo before. Anyway, it's really cool seeing Nintendo expand on the Chozo lore and I hope they have more for us in the future. Hopefully there are some more Chozo tribes that survived.
When you think about birds in Japan, it's usually heron, pheasant, or the Black Kite, or Tobi. Very mcuh known for being a majestic animal and abundantly spottable in Japan, so it's probably that one. Others could be samll birds like Pygmy woodpeckers because Japnese like drums so much, or Japanese Skylark because skylarks have similar symbolism as Icarus, not so much the fall but the innocence in front of secret, mystic information that might lead to it.
Back in the Super Metroid days their statues reminded me of macaws/cockatoos, because of the shape and relative size of their beaks, and the way the Torizos are able to articulate their upper beak, like parrots do.
I've been digging into the game's files, and the letter for "n" is listed as "ñ" in there - makes sense cause MercurySteam is in Spain, but it makes me wonder if the Chozo say "ñ" instead of "n". Additionally, I found a texture that says "access point" in English, and another that says "arocum" in Chozo The letters are most often stored with the bottoms down. I assume that is the default.
Quiet Robe very clearly pronounces Samus Aran as Tamus Arlan, which made me wonder. Since T and S are VERY similar symbols, there might be some rule about that which might hint towards what kind fo instances these variances may occur at. S and T are also phonetically simialr, produed at t he tip of your tounge, and what makes the difference? How you use your teeth. And there are BIRD people.. My ongoing theory is that the triangles exist as a phonetic system for the convenience of inter-species communication, so the chozo took into accord the varying tooth situation some species' might have and simplified their traditional name "Tamus" as "Samus". It's similar to Marvel's Pietro being called "Peter" to help the unfortunately equipped in the linguistic sphere. Another thing is, that heavy "rl" in Tamus Arlan also is similarly linked the soft "n". The symbols are very similar, and both sounds are made at the top of your mouth. However, L breaks the mols but it bears resemblance to the whistling sounds of J and V, so L in chozo language might exist to be kind of a hard stop like K is. And K surely is.
n and ñ arent the same leter in spanish Its usally sometimes included in the alphabet, they are not interchangeable, an n in spanish is the same as in english
I think the letter "L" is more than a loose match considering you can find it in the "Hadar Sen Olmen" written on Raven Beak's clothes. So the rest seems to be a pretty perfect match
I have been trying to decode spoken chozo as well. For those who are curious, this is what I've found so far. Note, some spellings may be inaccurate, particularly consonants, and there definitely may be errors. Note 2, I believe chozo lacks plural nouns. Mohroid Metroid Hadar power Behek beak Sen is Ili the Dosh to Les in Ish but Has yes Olmen everything Arshgar raven Henkin quiet Maradis robe Ana I man am Hasana tribe Sabalba however Muvi were Edis x Disguise nido Arek yet Ebores somehow salatin scientist Ni he Ninu his Nubarash worships Nik at Dar of Ferun shrine Kedar eye Darnam symbolic Bunta great Eidis enough Kinel galaxy Beka to rule Kabodi plotted Shpalan bring Bihikalki biological Sacra weapon Orek accomplish Bura this Cabara possess Mehinin needed Sahali ability Uran control Kal for Nis that Tostek purpose Ana I Makolen alone Akalai spared Hen and Durutan gathering Garaman actually Bi a/an (sounds like pi in salatin [scientist]) Ele narrowly meidisi managed Yoris plan Gelsoun soldier Bados lain Maradan ruin Ash if Nar are Huma being Satari used Lin by Vehe listen Hadoran well Ata you Hamar has Kumani commanded Hun them Debolen extract Tama your Harispi body Habar have Kisari unlocked Sacar? Gate Bala counting Mi on Ana me Turanka? Disappoint Kini did Unu no (maybe not also) Hadarist powerful Saki even Cohana hold Megori descended Shak into Utanka chaos Oltar all Bari infected Man who (am) Varagai attacked Mavoris called Epa physical Palis prowess Ninu cabaran he possesses Neporien superior Nikur intelligence Rahama warrior Umar leader Sahari aided Lin by Noras fellow Ora we Pura these Karonan contain Ura our Majartanta intention Saral eradicate Kuni which Hasar took Igale extreme Ubanan measures
Not inaccurate, but adhere to different systmization. I hope I could off the top of my head remember a word for it, but it's common occurrence in double-phased translation. Things like, Japanese ん being written as N in romaji, but in fact it is not always PRONOUNCED or WRITTEN as ん (because the pronunciation is older than the symbol ん and associated with the kanji from further back. It's an interesting thing, since that kind proves Japanese DOES have "loose" M letter, they just don't have the symbol for it so it's "replaced" with ん. And we can verify this is true, because replacement also happens like with WA particle being spelled as HA, は. It's interesting because this IMPLIES that the Tamus Arlan (if you pay attention how the Chozo word, the actual pronounced NAME, is said) has the legacy of being pronounced that way, and EVEN NEWER system of writing corresponds woith our roman letters to spell it "Samus Aran" and is formalized enough to be the "correct" spelling. This does makes sense of course, if Chozo have hieroglyphs like kanji and ALSO this presumably newer letter system, but ti's nevertheless pretty deep lore. Guestion is is the triangle lettering like Hiragana invented by Japanese (by chozo), or do they use it to match the Human empire? It could be the federation standard, OR some federation-invented, universal lettering, perhaps based on an old cooperation with the alien inventors of those symbols, possibly completely unrelated to chozo.
@@sboinkthelegday3892 I understand what your saying, but there are two reasons I haven't done some alternate classification. First, when I started this the alphabet hadn't yet been decoded and been made publicly available, so I wasn't trying to make chozo accurate spellings. And also all evidence pointed (points) to it being a direct 1 to 1 transfer to latin alphabet, with no trace of common alternate letters like th or sh, nor missing letters. Secondly, I dont know of any evidence that the actual game (not promotionals) spell out samus aran (which as you said is tamus arlan). So essentially, I do not see any reason to adopt a different system, due to a lack of solid evidence that chozo has different legacy pronunciations. Besides, this is one of the easiest ways to convey pronunciation, even if not spelling. If some serious evidence of multiple discrepancies between written and spoken chozo appear, that couldn't be readily handled by a two item table or a simple pronunciation rule summed up as a dipthong, I would then alter my system as you suggest.
@@sboinkthelegday3892 If the triangle lettering matches the words and names in the Metroid universe exactly, then they are Roman-based with single vowels and consonants. However, when people are spread far and wide or lived seperately for a long time, dialects can appear. The square style of letters might be a different writing system developed by a different caste but based on the same language.
@@elidugal7733 hey man... I actually took references from romanization of the phonetics of ancient Egyptian because hieroglyphs and I came to this samus's speech transcript: Samus: Kino u'lu turu'ta. Anamari'l ksanu:r pura. Aimarhel kal'om. The vowels are pronounced in pure sounds and the single quote and the colon just add little pauses in the speech. Hehehe..
This is insane! So cool, it blows my mind! I hope someone can piece together a full language, canonical or fan made, like Elven/Elvish/??? from Middle Earth or Klingon from Star Trek.
Amazing video, the team of yours has done an incredible job on the cipher! I had formed an independent group that includes Darts, Bearborg, who worked on the original Other M cipher, etc., and we have made some progress ourself! :^) With the spoken language, we can confirm the positions of K and W from the word "Mawkin", which are actually swapped compared to yours and our former iterations of the cipher. X's position is placed somewhere else, as a cyan teleportal in Burenia has a different, new symbol which apparently is identified as "teleport station X" in the files. Furthermore, the L is confirmed via "Hadar sen olmen", written on the mural and on Raven Beak's robe thing, and it has a different symbol. That being said, I cannot overstate how good of a video this is, I have been longing for a video about the Chozo language
Something I noticed almost instantly when comparing the Dread and Fusion alphabets - they're the same alphabet. Fusion's are square due to pixel scale, and the character for B is horizontally flipped (which is fine since there isn't a letter that's the same shape flipped), but if you look closely at each of the glyphs and ignore vertical flipping since it doesn't seem to be meaningful, the actual core shapes are a 1 to 1 match. In fact, the only letters that seem to be different at all are B, L, and Z, and the latter two are "close enough" at a stretch, my guess being that they didn't translate well to the triangular shape. Accordingly, we can deduce that any existing knowledge about the mechanics of the language can be accurately ported over from Fusion, or back from Dread.
@@junosoft Where what? If you mean where in Fusion, I don't know, I legit just meant the square alphabet shown in the video and used in a few prior games.
I'm curious to know if the individual Chozo words themselves are based on any real languages. Grammatically, Chozo is seemingly 1-to-1 with English, and pronunciation seems borrowed from Spanish or Japanese, which are known to have strict pronunciation as opposed to English. Those design choices were probably to make it very easy to actually learn how to translate and speak Chozo. After all, the voice actors for Quiet Robe and Raven Beak had to learn this completely alien language in order to deliver their lines. What would be interesting to know is if the words themselves have roots in another language, or if there is some cryptographic trick being utilized to create spelling. If we can figure out the link between the words we know, for example, how we actually go from 'power' to 'hadar', it would then be theoretically possible to translate the entire English dictionary using the same key, as it were.
We definitely noticed the spoken language feels a bit like Spanish, which makes sense considering MercurySteam is based in Spain. We also know that Samus' actress, Nikki Garcia, is also from Spain. We'll need to determine how much of the Spanish feel is from any particular influence and how much is a result of the voice actors' natural accents.
@@NinWRTV In the reddit thread on this, people have pointed out that Chozo also shares certain qualities with Japanese, such as a lack of plurals as well as a lack of gendered grammar or pronouns (meaning no el/la/un/una, only the/a as in English; and no he/she/him/her, only gender neutral equivalents). Regarding the names of the planets, it's possible the Chozo also take their naming conventions from Japanese. In Japanese, "planet" is "wakusei", which, when translated literally, means something along the lines of "perplexing star", and pretty much every celestial object which appears as a star with the naked eye, including our solar system planets, are named/termed with the "star" character 星 "sei", e.g. Mars is "kasei", literally "fire star", Venus is "kinsei", literally "gold star", and so forth. Chozo then might name their planets the same way, thus "ili Agar Nalima" ("the [SR388] Star") and "ili Tarin Nalima" (the [ZDR] Star).
@@7QWERTY13 Heck, our word "planet" is derived from Greek for "wanderer" thanks to how the planets move across the sky relative to the stars behind them.
I'm surprised nobody noticed the word for I (ana) comes from Arabic. I didn't notice any other Arabic words in any of the cutscenes but I thought it was still cool that there was at least one
@@7QWERTY13 Of note is that the one planet that seems to have an actual name (outside of the Prime series) is Zebes, Samus' home planet and allegedly the Chozo homeworld. It stands to reason that 'Zebes' is in fact the Chozo name for that planet as Samus would refer to it as such (thus the full title would be 'Illi Zebes Nalima').
As a long-time Metroid fan since Prime, this video brings me great joy. Ever since I could remember, I tried to find the origins of the Chozo language to decipher it. Been wanting to get a proper tattoo and finally found my base. I’m so excited to start Dread! 😁
I made a full transcript of the Quiet Robe cutscene: SPOILERS BELOW ENGLISH CHOZO I am Quiet Robe, a scientist of the Thoha tribe. Anaman Henkin Maradis, bi salaku dar ili Thoha hasana. The Chozo who attacked you is called Raven Beak. Ili Chozo man faradai ata sen mahfris Ash-Krah Behek. He possesses superior physical prowess and intelligence, and is the leader of a Minu kamara neporen evapalis em ikur, em sen ili tanamar tar bi Chozo warrior tribe called the Mawkin. Chozo rahama hasana mavuris ili Maukin. Aided by the Maukin, a fellow tribe of the Chozo, we managed to contain the Metroids Sahari lin ili Maukin, bi noras hasana tar ili chozo, vora irisi tos karodan ili Mathroid that were running rampant on SR388. neg muri talar suradis me ili agar nalima. Our intention was to eradicate these Metroids, which had become more dangerous than ever before, by destroying the planet. Urama har pantam muri tos saval vura Mathroid, kuni havar ihundar dara savekes enhon chanin lin katalu ili uliris. However… Savalva… Raven Beak…took extreme measures to prevent that. Ash-kan Behek…hasari gale ubana dos helegar mir. He worships at the altar of power. In his eyes, the Metroids were… Minu barash nek ili ferun dar hadar. Les minu kedar, ili mathroid muvi… symbolic of a power great enough to rule the galaxy. danan tar bi hadar bunta eiris dos eka ili kimel. Raven Beak plotted to bring the Metroids to ZDR and use them as a bioweapon. Ash-kar Behek kabori tos balan ili Mathroid tos ili tarim nalima em satar kun bin bi kalkisacra. To accomplish this, he needed the Thoha tribe, as we possess the ability to control Dos korek bura, miru mehinin ili Thoha hasana, bi mura kabara ili sahali dos uran the Metroids. ili mathroid. For that purpose, I alone was spared. Kal mir tostek, anama koren muvi rakalai. Raven Beak and the Maukin tribe took me back to their homeworld, ZDR, in order to continue their preparations for gathering Metroids. Ash-kar behek em ili Mawkin hasana hasari ana balta dos umahar saria, ili tarim nalima, les duracan dos geren humahar korgan gal turutam mathroid However, they ran into unforeseen difficulties and were forced to put their Savalva, un tala ismi shaksiruma linebak em ubi lanai tos koro humahar plan on hold. ioris me ikohana. One of the soldiers who returned from SR388 was actually an X in disguise. Ai tar ili kelsu man lunaloni ishka ili agar nalima mugi garama bi Eris les mitu. ZDR descended into chaos. All of the soldiers were infected by the X. Ili tarim nalima megur ile shakutanka. On tar humahar kelsu mugli bari lin ili Eris. Yet somehow, Raven Beak narrowly managed to contain them. Arek ebores, Ash-Kar Behek eleme irisi dos karodan hun. He then turned his thoughts to resuming his plan… Ninu aros hakage ninumahar meheni dos tumema ninumahar ioris… But the Metroids on SR388 had already been eradicated by your hand. Ish ili Mathroid me ili agar nalima havari bama bugi sarali lina tamahar to-oshek. With the Metroids now extinct… Nut ili mathroid esmorodo… Raven Beak’s plans should have lain in ruin. ili ioris dar Ash-khar Behek tora havar bados les maradan. Yes, lain in ruin…if not for you. Has, bados les maradan…ashka unu gal ata. The E.M.M.I. are being used by Raven Beak. Samus Aran…listen well. He has commanded them to… Ili Emmai mar huma satari lin Ash-Khar Behek. Tamus Arlan vehe hadoran. Minu havar cumane hun dos… Extract the Metroid DNA from within your body. Tevolen ili Mathroid DEN eshka nulisa tamahar isbi.
Don’t worry… Dino kono toroto… I’ll end this. Once and for all. Anamarel sanol pura. Ai marhel kalo.
You must proceed this way-I have unlocked the gate. Ata eshtor daburis bura hana-Ana havar kisari ili saka. I am counting on you, Samus. Anaman bara mir ata, Tamus Here is the complete vocab: English Chozodian (Loading screen) Chaao a | an bi and em as bin body isbi by lin | lina Chozo Chozo commanded cumane contain karodan counting on you bara mir ata disguise mitu DNA DEN Don't worry Dino kono toroto E.M.M.I. Emmai end sanol extinct esmorodo extract tevolei fellow noras for kal | gal from eshka Galaxy Kimel gate saka had havari has | have havar He Ninu | Minu his ninumahar his eyes minu kedar However Sabalba | Savalva I Anama I am Anaman if ashka I'll Anamarel in les is sen lain in ruin bados les maradan listen vehe managed irisi Mawkin [Maukin] Metroid [Mathroid] must eshtol named | called mavuris | mahfris | mauris not unu of tar | dar | tarm on me Once and for all Ai marhel kalo one | once ai plan iori possess kabara | kamara power hadar Power is everything Hadar Sen Olmen proceed daburis Quiet Robe Henkin Maradis Raven Beak Ash-kar | Ash-kran | Ash-kra Behek run | running tala | talar Samus Aran Samus [Tamus Arlan] scientist salaku should tora soldier kelsu SR388 Ili agar nalima that mir the ili their humahar them hun | kun this bura | pura Thoha Thoha to dos | tos took hasari tribe hasana unlocked kisari use satar used satari Warrior Rahama was | were muvi | muri | mugli way hana well hadoran who ma | man with nut [Noot] within nulisa X parasite Eris Yes Has you ata your tamahar ZDR Ili tarim nalima
Shouldn't ZDR and SR388 be written with caps? Like "Tarim Nalima" and "Agar Nalima"? Or since we also name our own planet system with single worlds, maybe assume Robe actually says "Agar planet" and "Tarim planet"?
So not only did they make a whole new alphabet, theY ALSO MADE A WHOLE SPOKEN DICTIONARY AS IF THE CHOZO LANGUAGE IS ANY OTHER LANUAGE IN THE WORLD. God I love this game and the lengths it goes
DUDE... Nintendo needs to lean right into this. Imagine being able to translate ancient murals in future games, stuff that only some of us can read. Imagine the insane easter eggs, lore and future insights they could hide in plain sight. It could be so dope.
I don't know if I will be able to contribute anything to this but I am fascinated by what you guys have discovered thus far! I will definitely watch this video later when I have time to sit down and focus on it! ❤️ thank you for sharing this information! 🤩
When I first played Dread and met Quiet Robe, I was so excited when I realized that the Chozo language wasn't gibberish and had a potential translation.
My fiancé pointed out that the Chozo spoken language sounds very much like Hebrew. Seeing as Mercurysteam is a Spanish company there could be some mixture of Spanish to Hebrew. Hope that helps!
Time to learn ANOTHER fictional alien font plus a few phrases that are original to and make this second alien font into a full on language The first was the Teoran alphabet, from Gwain Saga, which is really just a font. But NOW, I have dread's chozo, and with this knowledge, which dare I say knowledge is power... Hadar sen olmen Edit: surprised at how the auto captions captated the spoken chozo, I was able to write them down in both teoran and the captions' romanized interpretations, along with translations for each. I'm more interested in learning an obscure bird man language than actual Italian lol
I'm thinking all forms of "to be" like "am", "is", and "are" are "SEN" in Chozo. When Quiet Robe says "I am Quiet Robe" he says "SEN" in the middle of that. Note that he doesn't use the "SEN" when it's attached to other verbs though like when he says "the chozo who attacked you IS CALLED ..." he doesn't use "SEN", this makes sense because in many other languages this is done using a different tense of the verb instead.
@@burningadri6775 but then it would not be the same thing op said. If he said "my name is Quiet Robe", this is the same "is" (SEN) as "power is everything"
they should release how to speak book for the chozo language, that would be rly nice perhaps in said book are lore bits and facts written in chozo, and you can translate that over the book by the end you got many cool facts and lerned chozo
It crossed my mind that SR388 would be The Green Planet while ZDR might be The Purple Planet, the unknown words referring to their colors when viewed from space.
There's another t-shirt that you got if you wanted from Amazon, also everything written in Chozo. Thanks to your Alphabet I can now say it says "Metroid Nabuvar" and considering this is the only thing on the t-shirt with the exception of the Switch and Metroid Dread Logo, I assume that Nabuvar means Dread in Chozo!
I am happy a video like this exists when I saw the Chozo dialogue scene I really hoped someone would find a way to speak it. It’s like speaking Klingon from Star Trek
So after watching this, I decided to take a crack at the Ferenia hieroglyphs. Only ended up getting 3 whole words decyphered, the rest were hard to make out with the quality of images I been able to use
I've always been fascinated by things like this. I translated everything in "Aquaria" years ago and I was pretty proficient in reading Aurabesh in "Star Wars: The Old Republic". It gets WAY more complicated when it's not a direct letter for letter substitution though.
this is super cool! I was relistening to the scenes with spoken language and thought it was rally cool to see it was consistent. Realizing what Raven Beak said at the beginning was the same at the end with the translation then seeing hadar was also the word for power that Quiet Robe said. I love that this was not just nonsense. I also really like that the language flips the triangles to make them fit nicely together. It makes the language feel like it has an elegance to it.
The real genius is if you speed pass adams speach, every word he says is Chozo and holds some secret At least I think, it sounds like some of the words mentioned here~ but its off Maybe every first completed word, and since the language is flipped, maybe the first word of the first sentence then the last word of the next one~ I'm overthinking this lol
It's likely that Chozo is simply a Re-Lex of English (in other words, it has the exact or nearly same Grammatical structure as English does, just with its vocabulary replaced.) but I still find this enjoyable, and particularly interesting. It makes sense to have it as a Re-Lex of English as Metroid is most popular in English speaking countries, but Mercury Steam is Spanish, and Nintendo is Japanese, so it makes me wonder if they have any other inspiration for it outside of that, and if it will be any more complex or different from English in any way. I come from a background of being a massive Star Wars nerd to the point I have learned much of Mando'a, the fictional language of the Mandalorians, as well as having a general interest in the English language as a whole. Mando'a is also a simple Re-Lex of English with a few small changes, such as removing gender. In which case, the speaker would simply insert another specific gender word to identify gender should it be necessary. For an example, the word "Buir" means "Parent", so if a distinction were necessary, they would say "Buir Jagyc" for "Father" or literally "Male Parent" and "Buir Dalyc" for "Mother" or literally "Female Parent." So I find myself massively excited to see that Mercury Steam put in so much effort to give us a spoken language for the Chozo, even if it is a simple Re-Lex, and it will be really interesting to see if it has any complexities or slight differences from English, similarly to Mando'a. On another note, I've found in the past that some people may find Re-Lex's to be lazy writing, to which I say go back to reading the Silmarillion or watching The Next Generation you crazy Tolkienite and/or Trekkie, not everybody has the ability to just write an entirely unique language for a fictional species in a Fantasy or Sci-Fi story. If they actually did that for the Chozo, the 15 year wait for Metroid Dread would have been closer to a 30 year wait. Re-Lex's are great, because it allows us to very easily create/learn a fictional language and be nerdy about it without spending too much time and resource on what, for many, wouldn't amount to be more than a hobby. Inclusivity and accessibility are nice in things like this. It is really cool to have a fully distinct language like the Klingon and Elvish languages, but that is an unrealistically high expectation to put into this sort of world building in my opinion.
They have some really unique pronounciation and i will call everything based on chozo now. Metroid = mathroid Raven beak = ashkar behek Samus aran = thamus arlan
I hope somebody makes a font to use these symbols 😂 I love how Nintendo made up a spoken language. It won't be long before fans start learning the spoken language.
I don't know about any of the very cool language and etymology studies y'all have put into this, but when it is spoken out loud the Chozo language reminds me of the Navajo language.
It's interesting that the cutscene uses grammatical articles. You see, the Hylian scripts from Zelda games are basically Japanese but with different symbols. The phonetics are the same, including any translation errors that might occur with 'r' and 'l' when trying to figure it out in Roman letters. However, Japanese and some other eastern langauges, don't have articles. They make no distinction between 'a pen' or 'the pen', it's just 'pen' and if you want to point to it, it's 'this pen', 'that pen' or 'that pen over there'. This creates a new complication: Sentence structure. Japanese sentence structure uses the verb at the end of the sentence rather than directly to a noun. Which means that we can't be sure that translating each word seperately will result in proper clean English or just the assumption of English. But Quiet Robe's pauses do match the sentence so perhaps it's pretty close to English or general Germanic sentence structures. Latin-derived languages are also possible, but French puts adverbs after the noun and I don't know how it goes in Spanish. To dive even deeper, his pronunciation of names and words we know isn't the same. The way he says 'Samus Aran' is more like 'sɑːmʊs ɑːrlɑːn' and 'metroid' as 'mɑːθrɔɪd'. And as the Chozo use symbolic names for themselves and what they are known for at birth. I think SR388 would be The Acid Planet and ZDR perhaps the Storm Planet. Otherwise it could be the names of colors but the Chozo went through space far and wide, I think they'd run out of unique color names by then.
The only thing I find weird is that in one of the final cutscenes when Raven Beak holds Samus by the throat, talking about being able to make clones of her, he says her name "Samus Aran" but in the language it doesn't sound as if he was saying her name. Maybe it's just difficult to hear right, but still.
It's really helpful that Chozo is a relex of English. I feel like it would have been way cooler (though a lot harder to translate) with its own grammar & syntax. But still, it's very cool.
In Enum there’s a planetarium in the background. It has a spinning graphic with chozo characters written on the top and bottom. I attempted to translate it using this alphabet but even translated the words don’t appear to be English. Anyone have any ideas?
This is what I gleaned from Quiet Robe’s words. “Xibalba” is the word however “Dhamus Arlan” is the chozo pronunciation of Samus Aran “Oxkon Berek” would be Raven Beak. (That’s how I’m spelling it I could be wrong. The x is pronounced like sh.) “Mathroid” is Metroid.
Been trying to figure out any patterns for forming past tense verbs. Unfortuntately i haven't been able to find many instances where both the present and past tense of a verb are made available. Quiet Robe gives us a bit of insight here: in Chozo, take is "hasar", while took is "hasari". Use is "sadar", while used is "sadari". Have is "habar", while had is "habari". Raven Beak gives us "ginu", which is do (Samus also says this word), while he also says "gini" for did. This seems to bear out for much of Quiet Robe's speech: the most common ways to form the past tense seem to either be to add an i at the end, or to replace the final vowel with an i. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be the only way, as Quiet Robe says "sen maboris Ashkar Behek" for "is called Raven Beak". Also, "to be" appears to be an irregular verb (of course). Is becomes "sen", but am/are becomes "man". And the past of "man" is "muvi".
Was looking at the Metroid Dread Hoodie and the bottom word on the front translates to Natuvar apparently. So it's written like: METROID NABULAR Real curious as to what the bottom word means.
![⭐️( ลอยกระทง 2024 ) Ver. แดนซ์ Remix BY [ ดีเจกิต รีมิกซ์ ]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/rMWOLhgXUHc/mqdefault.jpg)
![Chromatic: The Game Boy to End All Game Boys - Hands-On Preview & Interview [NWRTV]](/img/n.gif)
The hoodie with red text on the sleeves shown in the video was given out at preview events and does not appear to be publicly for sale.
This video shows it and the other preview event stuff given out:
th-cam.com/video/g144WQulL28/w-d-xo.html
Congratulations for the work ! You and matt are very good !
Ylease Doit Crop Us Out
Are you gonna do a follow up video on this to see what's been learned?
The spoken Chozo language fascinated me ever since I witnessed the cutscene with Quiet Robe. I noticed repeat words and noticed that the Chozo language was not complete gibberish. It has all five main structures of a language: morphology, phonology, syntax, phonetics and semantics.
Props to MercurySteam for doing their research when creating this language and making it sound authentic.
Linguistics nerds unite! I actually scrubbed through the entire conversation with Quiet Robe and parsed out every individual word (to the best of my ability). I need help.
It most likely is just an English cipher like Klingon is for star trek. It uses totally different sounds and words but maps 1 to 1 with English, rather than being a unique language with a unique design.
Chozo is as much of a language as piglatin is.
I'm still kinda shocked that everyone's been pronouncing Metroid wrong this entire time, even Nintendo themselves
@@Commander034 I can confirm this is the case but with a couple changes (namely that nouns don’t reflect number and verbs lack any kind of conjugation; also there are only possessive forms for the pronouns, while nouns and proper nouns require an “of” structure to show possession. The only place the Chozo cypher differs in wording from the English subtitles is when it says “Raven Beak’s plan,” while the Chozo says “the plan of Raven Beak”).
@@previllion5355 These changes are likely just to lengthen the sentences so they sound more complex. Notably Japanese possiveness is similar and a Nintendo affiliated artist is likely at least casually familiar with that.
What exists of Chozo likely leaves it incomplete and nonfunctional as a language.
If the Trekies can speak Klingon WE CAN SPEAK CHOZO, DANG IT!
Fuck yessssss
Bird language
Ah yes Chozoian!
We are all on the same wavelength. As I want to speak it too.
I dream of the day we get to have entire conversations in Chozo
I genuinely love how Metroid dread hasn't even been out for a week and the fanbase has already collectively almost completed the translation of a brand new language that has first appeared in it... the collective efforts of people who truly enjoy and care about something-- it's just amazing what you can accomplish when many people genuinely care
I mean not quite. The spoken one, yes. But the Chozo alphabet has been around since Prime at the very least.
Don't fuck with us Metroid fans, we'll do one sided wall jumps.
@@yoursonisold8743 The "square" one is from Zero Mission and Other M I believe. Prime had vastly different one.
@@skyray16 Nope. The Chozo language is consistent between Prime and Other M.
Damn i love when some random laguage in a game can actually be translated
This is what I love about Metroid. It's a beautiful mix of sci-fi and mystical/fantasy elements.
The text on the loading screen seems to be "chado" which might mean "loading" or "wait" or so. It's also spinning around the morph ball symbol in the same screen.
yeah man just found it out myself a day ago and i had to write a comment about its meaning in the japanese world 🤣👌
"teatime"
@@Lah-Criz Beautiful
Could likely also mean "Charging" or "Reading" or something of a similar interpretation.
So going by this, the control console Quiet Robe was using seems to have the following on its display:
EMMI GIMEVEW HARES SAGARNA NAMUR
WEVIMA TURA TEBOVEN METROID DIM SAMUS
SUTANWA MUVUI
I'm fairly certain that at one point Quiet Robe says "teboven ili metroid dim", which based on the subtitles would make teboven "extract" and dim "dna".
I suspect that tura could mean "kill". Which then leads me to suspect that wevima could be something like "capture" (or maybe "pursue"). I think that section lays out the program directives for the EMMI.
When Quiet Robe activates the EMMI, he taps NAMUR, HARES, GIMEVEW, so these could be words that identify command buttons.
The glyphs that Samus finds before meeting Quiet Robe seems to be separated into three parts, though it's kinda hard to make out completely clearly. On the left: HADAR SEN OLMEN. To the right looks like: URA MENWE URAMAHAR TURUWI NUPHA. Then at the bottom looks like: ILI MUHAI NINTA URA.
Based on the images accompanying these words, it's possible that TURA and TURUWI relate in some way like "kill" and "killed" or "killing".
It will be very interesting once we're able to decipher all these messages throughout the game.
i wanted to add that the word after "dim" (DNA) translates to SAMUS which can obviously be confirmed by the promotional stuff. also there an unofficial transcript i found of quiet robe's monologue where he says the word for "extract" and it essentially matches the screen he clicks on to turn the EMMI off. in that same transcript URAMAHAR is said to be "our" and URA meaning "we" which does make sense seeing as our is a plural possessive (both containing "URA")
@@skylarrae thanks for that additional info! To me, that seems to suggest that Chozo make no distinction between "we" and "us", and URA can mean either, based on context.
Instinctively, this leads me to believe that URA MENWE URAMAHAR TURUWI NUPHA could mean something along the lines of "we met our deaths here". And then that line at the bottom is where they talk about what "the 'something' _______ us."
@@shannonjones8877 yes that's exactly what i was thinking! i even think it could be from the perspective of the Mawkin, something about what they did to the Thoha, considering that HADAR SEN OLMEN is the text next to the depiction of Raven Beak and the mural is located on ZDR afterall, where the Mawkin have resided. i just wish we had more similar words to go off of in game because this is so fascinating lol.
@Shannon Jones NAMUR, HARES, and GIMEVEW might be referring to the three remaining EMMI at that point in the game. When he activates those EMMI the blue, purple, and brown. The names you translated might mean those 3 colors or perhaps Ferenia, Gavoran, and Hanubia.
They didn't have to go this far but I'm so happy they did
Very likely the text in Dread is all written in Mawkin dialects, what runes and script are found in Chozodia, the Tallon ruins, and the SR-388 ruins are different.
This is a great observation that i didnt catch, i dont think this translation is entirely correct or that the words in the game don't translate to english bit chozo which would make sense, but make translation much more difficult. I wanna crack this!
We found out something interesting. Samus Returns/Other M/Zero Mission/Prime2 feature quadratic Chozo Letters, if you compare them to Dreads triangular ones you actually see that they are the same structure. It’s like comparing english letters from 100-200 years ago to the new ones. The letters in dread aren’t a different alphabet, they are a newer font!!!
The letters in Prime 1 and Prime 3 though have nothing in common with the ones from Dread/ZM/OM/SR though
@@theakiwar9118 it always seemed to me that the Tallon IV chozo weren't related to the zebes chozo as the Tallon IV chozo where kind of like space Amish (in that the left the technological lifestyle behind to be closer to nature.) This could mean there are now 3 known tribes. It is also possible that the Thoha tribe isn't the zebes tribe. That would make 4 known tribes.
@@matthewrawlings1284 Mawkin tribe is not. They are from ZDR. If anything Thoha are from Zebes, while SR388 was their colony.
Metroid fusion, Zero Mission, Other M, Samus returns, and Dread were not made with the prime games in mind.
Just keep that in mind before trying to make lore connections. You might just have to suspend your disbelief.
“However” was a word I noticed was recurring and consistent as well, it sounds kinda like “sebulba”. Awesome work from mercury steam.
And when he mentions Raven beak, it sounds like 'Ashkar Behek'. I also noticed the way he pronounces 'Thoha'. Still haven't figured out how he refers to himself upon his introduction though...
@@m.s.5370 hen'kin maradis.
@@m.s.5370 I figured the ‘Raven’ in Raven Beak was a tangential translation considering Chozo probably don’t even have ravens on any of their planets. Ashkar is probably the name of an alien bird, similar to a Raven. That’s really cool. Also Ashkar is a good name, we can call him Ash for short.
@@solomon9655 Raven is also a shade of black and, in one of the gallery art pieces unlocked upon completion of the game, Raven Beak is seen outside his armor and his beak is...about raven black. So, whatever Chozo word is used in Raven Beak's name is probably in reference to a color we conveniently named after a dope bird on our planet and it is too tempting to not translate it as such.
SABALBA
Really cool with the alphabet, language actually being consistent aswell as the overall lore and design of the game Dread tied it all together in the end!
The "L" is visible in the cutscene where Samus walks out of the ELUN zone while the X fly by.
3:45 Raven Beak says the same line in the beginning before samus loses her powers.
It's kinda weird that he has that quote on a banner everywhere he goes😂
@@masterhind2036 Based on all the places we find it, the phrase is probably some kind of mantra for his tribe.
What really helps is that the language is completely English in grammar and sentence structure. You can literally translate it word for word from English to Chozo, back and forth. The only difference is the planet names. Other games have done this before, like Zelda where the writing is either directly translatable to Japanese or English, but I think it's a first for Nintendo where they created a spoken language along with writing. No I don't count Zelda's singing in Skyward Sword, it's gibberish. Same for the language in Starfox Adventures.
What I also really like is how the two Chozo tribes are different types of birds. The Mawkin look very crow-like, Raven Beak being a dead giveaway but the other soldiers look very similar. Not sure what the Thoha are but they all have short, wide beaks. Older depictions made them look like falcons, but Quiet Robe doesn't give me that vibe. Maybe a slight retcon, Chozo were always just Chozo before.
Anyway, it's really cool seeing Nintendo expand on the Chozo lore and I hope they have more for us in the future. Hopefully there are some more Chozo tribes that survived.
When you think about birds in Japan, it's usually heron, pheasant, or the Black Kite, or Tobi. Very mcuh known for being a majestic animal and abundantly spottable in Japan, so it's probably that one. Others could be samll birds like Pygmy woodpeckers because Japnese like drums so much, or Japanese Skylark because skylarks have similar symbolism as Icarus, not so much the fall but the innocence in front of secret, mystic information that might lead to it.
Back in the Super Metroid days their statues reminded me of macaws/cockatoos, because of the shape and relative size of their beaks, and the way the Torizos are able to articulate their upper beak, like parrots do.
I wonder if the voice actors would be able to chime in on this, since they were speaking it, right?
@Noah H That's a good point.
@Noah H prime 1's chozo language is just a repeating texture from what I've been told. I've suggested translating it before
Unfortunately, I believe that they may have had to sign NDAs.
And screwing their chances to get a future gig.... Right, it will happen for sure.
I've been digging into the game's files, and the letter for "n" is listed as "ñ" in there - makes sense cause MercurySteam is in Spain, but it makes me wonder if the Chozo say "ñ" instead of "n".
Additionally, I found a texture that says "access point" in English, and another that says "arocum" in Chozo
The letters are most often stored with the bottoms down. I assume that is the default.
I wouldn't be surprised if some of the texts are in Spanish actually... Or even if the Chozo language has some Spanish base all around.
Quiet Robe very clearly pronounces Samus Aran as Tamus Arlan, which made me wonder. Since T and S are VERY similar symbols, there might be some rule about that which might hint towards what kind fo instances these variances may occur at.
S and T are also phonetically simialr, produed at t he tip of your tounge, and what makes the difference? How you use your teeth. And there are BIRD people.. My ongoing theory is that the triangles exist as a phonetic system for the convenience of inter-species communication, so the chozo took into accord the varying tooth situation some species' might have and simplified their traditional name "Tamus" as "Samus". It's similar to Marvel's Pietro being called "Peter" to help the unfortunately equipped in the linguistic sphere.
Another thing is, that heavy "rl" in Tamus Arlan also is similarly linked the soft "n". The symbols are very similar, and both sounds are made at the top of your mouth. However, L breaks the mols but it bears resemblance to the whistling sounds of J and V, so L in chozo language might exist to be kind of a hard stop like K is. And K surely is.
n and ñ arent the same leter in spanish
Its usally sometimes included in the alphabet, they are not interchangeable, an n in spanish is the same as in english
Ñ
I love how the rosetta stone for the chozo language was a tshirt
Mercury Steam completed Dread in 2019 but it took two years to develop the Chozo language
I've been curious about the spoken lines that had no subtitles, like when we first meet Raven Beak.
I thought he just said "Hadar sen olmen" like in the final cutscene
@@spinomania1921 I really have a hard time hearing that the first time.
@@spinomania1921 This
You can also hear it when samus fires the hyper beam at Raven beak-X, though whether it's in Samus' head or Raven Beak-X saying it i'm not sure.
I think the letter "L" is more than a loose match considering you can find it in the "Hadar Sen Olmen" written on Raven Beak's clothes. So the rest seems to be a pretty perfect match
I'm not a language buff, but I still deeply appreciate the work being done by this video and it's comment section.
i think the square Chozo lettering is Thoha, triangular is Mawkin :)
Hasana means tribe. Tribe means no-one get's left behind or forgotten.
I have been trying to decode spoken chozo as well. For those who are curious, this is what I've found so far. Note, some spellings may be inaccurate, particularly consonants, and there definitely may be errors. Note 2, I believe chozo lacks plural nouns.
Mohroid Metroid
Hadar power
Behek beak
Sen is
Ili the
Dosh to
Les in
Ish but
Has yes
Olmen everything
Arshgar raven
Henkin quiet
Maradis robe
Ana I
man am
Hasana tribe
Sabalba however
Muvi were
Edis x
Disguise nido
Arek yet
Ebores somehow
salatin scientist
Ni he
Ninu his
Nubarash worships
Nik at
Dar of
Ferun shrine
Kedar eye
Darnam symbolic
Bunta great
Eidis enough
Kinel galaxy
Beka to rule
Kabodi plotted
Shpalan bring
Bihikalki biological
Sacra weapon
Orek accomplish
Bura this
Cabara possess
Mehinin needed
Sahali ability
Uran control
Kal for
Nis that
Tostek purpose
Ana I
Makolen alone
Akalai spared
Hen and
Durutan gathering
Garaman actually
Bi a/an (sounds like pi in salatin [scientist])
Ele narrowly
meidisi managed
Yoris plan
Gelsoun soldier
Bados lain
Maradan ruin
Ash if
Nar are
Huma being
Satari used
Lin by
Vehe listen
Hadoran well
Ata you
Hamar has
Kumani commanded
Hun them
Debolen extract
Tama your
Harispi body
Habar have
Kisari unlocked
Sacar? Gate
Bala counting
Mi on
Ana me
Turanka? Disappoint
Kini did
Unu no (maybe not also)
Hadarist powerful
Saki even
Cohana hold
Megori descended
Shak into
Utanka chaos
Oltar all
Bari infected
Man who (am)
Varagai attacked
Mavoris called
Epa physical
Palis prowess
Ninu cabaran he possesses
Neporien superior
Nikur intelligence
Rahama warrior
Umar leader
Sahari aided
Lin by
Noras fellow
Ora we
Pura these
Karonan contain
Ura our
Majartanta intention
Saral eradicate
Kuni which
Hasar took
Igale extreme
Ubanan measures
Not inaccurate, but adhere to different systmization. I hope I could off the top of my head remember a word for it, but it's common occurrence in double-phased translation. Things like, Japanese ん being written as N in romaji, but in fact it is not always PRONOUNCED or WRITTEN as ん (because the pronunciation is older than the symbol ん and associated with the kanji from further back. It's an interesting thing, since that kind proves Japanese DOES have "loose" M letter, they just don't have the symbol for it so it's "replaced" with ん. And we can verify this is true, because replacement also happens like with WA particle being spelled as HA, は.
It's interesting because this IMPLIES that the Tamus Arlan (if you pay attention how the Chozo word, the actual pronounced NAME, is said) has the legacy of being pronounced that way, and EVEN NEWER system of writing corresponds woith our roman letters to spell it "Samus Aran" and is formalized enough to be the "correct" spelling. This does makes sense of course, if Chozo have hieroglyphs like kanji and ALSO this presumably newer letter system, but ti's nevertheless pretty deep lore.
Guestion is is the triangle lettering like Hiragana invented by Japanese (by chozo), or do they use it to match the Human empire? It could be the federation standard, OR some federation-invented, universal lettering, perhaps based on an old cooperation with the alien inventors of those symbols, possibly completely unrelated to chozo.
@@sboinkthelegday3892 I understand what your saying, but there are two reasons I haven't done some alternate classification. First, when I started this the alphabet hadn't yet been decoded and been made publicly available, so I wasn't trying to make chozo accurate spellings. And also all evidence pointed (points) to it being a direct 1 to 1 transfer to latin alphabet, with no trace of common alternate letters like th or sh, nor missing letters. Secondly, I dont know of any evidence that the actual game (not promotionals) spell out samus aran (which as you said is tamus arlan). So essentially, I do not see any reason to adopt a different system, due to a lack of solid evidence that chozo has different legacy pronunciations. Besides, this is one of the easiest ways to convey pronunciation, even if not spelling. If some serious evidence of multiple discrepancies between written and spoken chozo appear, that couldn't be readily handled by a two item table or a simple pronunciation rule summed up as a dipthong, I would then alter my system as you suggest.
@@sboinkthelegday3892 If the triangle lettering matches the words and names in the Metroid universe exactly, then they are Roman-based with single vowels and consonants. However, when people are spread far and wide or lived seperately for a long time, dialects can appear. The square style of letters might be a different writing system developed by a different caste but based on the same language.
Mad respect for writing that down 👏👏👏
@@elidugal7733 hey man... I actually took references from romanization of the phonetics of ancient Egyptian because hieroglyphs and I came to this samus's speech transcript:
Samus: Kino u'lu turu'ta. Anamari'l ksanu:r pura. Aimarhel kal'om.
The vowels are pronounced in pure sounds and the single quote and the colon just add little pauses in the speech. Hehehe..
This is insane!
So cool, it blows my mind!
I hope someone can piece together a full language, canonical or fan made, like Elven/Elvish/??? from Middle Earth or Klingon from Star Trek.
Amazing video, the team of yours has done an incredible job on the cipher! I had formed an independent group that includes Darts, Bearborg, who worked on the original Other M cipher, etc., and we have made some progress ourself! :^)
With the spoken language, we can confirm the positions of K and W from the word "Mawkin", which are actually swapped compared to yours and our former iterations of the cipher. X's position is placed somewhere else, as a cyan teleportal in Burenia has a different, new symbol which apparently is identified as "teleport station X" in the files.
Furthermore, the L is confirmed via "Hadar sen olmen", written on the mural and on Raven Beak's robe thing, and it has a different symbol. That being said, I cannot overstate how good of a video this is, I have been longing for a video about the Chozo language
Something I noticed almost instantly when comparing the Dread and Fusion alphabets - they're the same alphabet. Fusion's are square due to pixel scale, and the character for B is horizontally flipped (which is fine since there isn't a letter that's the same shape flipped), but if you look closely at each of the glyphs and ignore vertical flipping since it doesn't seem to be meaningful, the actual core shapes are a 1 to 1 match. In fact, the only letters that seem to be different at all are B, L, and Z, and the latter two are "close enough" at a stretch, my guess being that they didn't translate well to the triangular shape. Accordingly, we can deduce that any existing knowledge about the mechanics of the language can be accurately ported over from Fusion, or back from Dread.
Wait, there was chozo language in Fusion? I thought it as only in Zero Mission and Other M.
@@skyray16 I'm admittedly no expert, may have mistaken that. The point is the same though, I meant the alphabet used in Other M.
@@foxoninetails_ Can you point out where?
@@junosoft Where what? If you mean where in Fusion, I don't know, I legit just meant the square alphabet shown in the video and used in a few prior games.
Are you sure it's not Zero Mission?
I love that S, T, and TH sometimes have the same sound when Quiet Robe speaks. Samus is almost pronounced tAMUS, and Metroid is pronounced MAthRO-ID.
I'm curious to know if the individual Chozo words themselves are based on any real languages. Grammatically, Chozo is seemingly 1-to-1 with English, and pronunciation seems borrowed from Spanish or Japanese, which are known to have strict pronunciation as opposed to English. Those design choices were probably to make it very easy to actually learn how to translate and speak Chozo. After all, the voice actors for Quiet Robe and Raven Beak had to learn this completely alien language in order to deliver their lines.
What would be interesting to know is if the words themselves have roots in another language, or if there is some cryptographic trick being utilized to create spelling. If we can figure out the link between the words we know, for example, how we actually go from 'power' to 'hadar', it would then be theoretically possible to translate the entire English dictionary using the same key, as it were.
We definitely noticed the spoken language feels a bit like Spanish, which makes sense considering MercurySteam is based in Spain. We also know that Samus' actress, Nikki Garcia, is also from Spain.
We'll need to determine how much of the Spanish feel is from any particular influence and how much is a result of the voice actors' natural accents.
@@NinWRTV In the reddit thread on this, people have pointed out that Chozo also shares certain qualities with Japanese, such as a lack of plurals as well as a lack of gendered grammar or pronouns (meaning no el/la/un/una, only the/a as in English; and no he/she/him/her, only gender neutral equivalents).
Regarding the names of the planets, it's possible the Chozo also take their naming conventions from Japanese. In Japanese, "planet" is "wakusei", which, when translated literally, means something along the lines of "perplexing star", and pretty much every celestial object which appears as a star with the naked eye, including our solar system planets, are named/termed with the "star" character 星 "sei", e.g. Mars is "kasei", literally "fire star", Venus is "kinsei", literally "gold star", and so forth. Chozo then might name their planets the same way, thus "ili Agar Nalima" ("the [SR388] Star") and "ili Tarin Nalima" (the [ZDR] Star).
@@7QWERTY13 Heck, our word "planet" is derived from Greek for "wanderer" thanks to how the planets move across the sky relative to the stars behind them.
I'm surprised nobody noticed the word for I (ana) comes from Arabic. I didn't notice any other Arabic words in any of the cutscenes but I thought it was still cool that there was at least one
@@7QWERTY13 Of note is that the one planet that seems to have an actual name (outside of the Prime series) is Zebes, Samus' home planet and allegedly the Chozo homeworld. It stands to reason that 'Zebes' is in fact the Chozo name for that planet as Samus would refer to it as such (thus the full title would be 'Illi Zebes Nalima').
As a long-time Metroid fan since Prime, this video brings me great joy. Ever since I could remember, I tried to find the origins of the Chozo language to decipher it. Been wanting to get a proper tattoo and finally found my base. I’m so excited to start Dread! 😁
I made a full transcript of the Quiet Robe cutscene: SPOILERS BELOW
ENGLISH CHOZO
I am Quiet Robe, a scientist of the Thoha tribe. Anaman Henkin Maradis, bi salaku dar ili Thoha hasana.
The Chozo who attacked you is called Raven Beak. Ili Chozo man faradai ata sen mahfris Ash-Krah Behek.
He possesses superior physical prowess and intelligence, and is the leader of a Minu kamara neporen evapalis em ikur, em sen ili tanamar tar bi
Chozo warrior tribe called the Mawkin. Chozo rahama hasana mavuris ili Maukin.
Aided by the Maukin, a fellow tribe of the Chozo, we managed to contain the Metroids Sahari lin ili Maukin, bi noras hasana tar ili chozo, vora irisi tos karodan ili Mathroid
that were running rampant on SR388. neg muri talar suradis me ili agar nalima.
Our intention was to eradicate these Metroids, which had become more dangerous than ever before, by destroying the planet. Urama har pantam muri tos saval vura Mathroid, kuni havar ihundar dara savekes enhon chanin lin katalu ili uliris.
However… Savalva…
Raven Beak…took extreme measures to prevent that. Ash-kan Behek…hasari gale ubana dos helegar mir.
He worships at the altar of power. In his eyes, the Metroids were… Minu barash nek ili ferun dar hadar. Les minu kedar, ili mathroid muvi…
symbolic of a power great enough to rule the galaxy. danan tar bi hadar bunta eiris dos eka ili kimel.
Raven Beak plotted to bring the Metroids to ZDR and use them as a bioweapon. Ash-kar Behek kabori tos balan ili Mathroid tos ili tarim nalima em satar kun bin bi kalkisacra.
To accomplish this, he needed the Thoha tribe, as we possess the ability to control Dos korek bura, miru mehinin ili Thoha hasana, bi mura kabara ili sahali dos uran
the Metroids. ili mathroid.
For that purpose, I alone was spared. Kal mir tostek, anama koren muvi rakalai.
Raven Beak and the Maukin tribe took me back to their homeworld, ZDR, in order to continue their preparations for gathering Metroids. Ash-kar behek em ili Mawkin hasana hasari ana balta dos umahar saria, ili tarim nalima, les duracan dos geren humahar korgan gal turutam mathroid
However, they ran into unforeseen difficulties and were forced to put their Savalva, un tala ismi shaksiruma linebak em ubi lanai tos koro humahar
plan on hold. ioris me ikohana.
One of the soldiers who returned from SR388 was actually an X in disguise. Ai tar ili kelsu man lunaloni ishka ili agar nalima mugi garama bi Eris les mitu.
ZDR descended into chaos. All of the soldiers were infected by the X. Ili tarim nalima megur ile shakutanka. On tar humahar kelsu mugli bari lin ili Eris.
Yet somehow, Raven Beak narrowly managed to contain them. Arek ebores, Ash-Kar Behek eleme irisi dos karodan hun.
He then turned his thoughts to resuming his plan… Ninu aros hakage ninumahar meheni dos tumema ninumahar ioris…
But the Metroids on SR388 had already been eradicated by your hand. Ish ili Mathroid me ili agar nalima havari bama bugi sarali lina tamahar to-oshek.
With the Metroids now extinct… Nut ili mathroid esmorodo…
Raven Beak’s plans should have lain in ruin. ili ioris dar Ash-khar Behek tora havar bados les maradan.
Yes, lain in ruin…if not for you. Has, bados les maradan…ashka unu gal ata.
The E.M.M.I. are being used by Raven Beak. Samus Aran…listen well. He has commanded them to… Ili Emmai mar huma satari lin Ash-Khar Behek. Tamus Arlan vehe hadoran. Minu havar cumane hun dos…
Extract the Metroid DNA from within your body. Tevolen ili Mathroid DEN eshka nulisa tamahar isbi.
Don’t worry… Dino kono toroto…
I’ll end this. Once and for all. Anamarel sanol pura. Ai marhel kalo.
You must proceed this way-I have unlocked the gate. Ata eshtor daburis bura hana-Ana havar kisari ili saka.
I am counting on you, Samus. Anaman bara mir ata, Tamus
Here is the complete vocab:
English Chozodian
(Loading screen) Chaao
a | an bi
and em
as bin
body isbi
by lin | lina
Chozo Chozo
commanded cumane
contain karodan
counting on you bara mir ata
disguise mitu
DNA DEN
Don't worry Dino kono toroto
E.M.M.I. Emmai
end sanol
extinct esmorodo
extract tevolei
fellow noras
for kal | gal
from eshka
Galaxy Kimel
gate saka
had havari
has | have havar
He Ninu | Minu
his ninumahar
his eyes minu kedar
However Sabalba | Savalva
I Anama
I am Anaman
if ashka
I'll Anamarel
in les
is sen
lain in ruin bados les maradan
listen vehe
managed irisi
Mawkin [Maukin]
Metroid [Mathroid]
must eshtol
named | called mavuris | mahfris | mauris
not unu
of tar | dar | tarm
on me
Once and for all Ai marhel kalo
one | once ai
plan iori
possess kabara | kamara
power hadar
Power is everything Hadar Sen Olmen
proceed daburis
Quiet Robe Henkin Maradis
Raven Beak Ash-kar | Ash-kran | Ash-kra Behek
run | running tala | talar
Samus Aran Samus [Tamus Arlan]
scientist salaku
should tora
soldier kelsu
SR388 Ili agar nalima
that mir
the ili
their humahar
them hun | kun
this bura | pura
Thoha Thoha
to dos | tos
took hasari
tribe hasana
unlocked kisari
use satar
used satari
Warrior Rahama
was | were muvi | muri | mugli
way hana
well hadoran
who ma | man
with nut [Noot]
within nulisa
X parasite Eris
Yes Has
you ata
your tamahar
ZDR Ili tarim nalima
Shouldn't ZDR and SR388 be written with caps? Like "Tarim Nalima" and "Agar Nalima"?
Or since we also name our own planet system with single worlds, maybe assume Robe actually says "Agar planet" and "Tarim planet"?
So not only did they make a whole new alphabet, theY ALSO MADE A WHOLE SPOKEN DICTIONARY AS IF THE CHOZO LANGUAGE IS ANY OTHER LANUAGE IN THE WORLD. God I love this game and the lengths it goes
First the Al-Bhed language from Final Fantasy X, now the Chozo language... I'm excited!
DUDE... Nintendo needs to lean right into this. Imagine being able to translate ancient murals in future games, stuff that only some of us can read. Imagine the insane easter eggs, lore and future insights they could hide in plain sight. It could be so dope.
They've already done stuff like this in Breath of The Wild
I can’t wait until raven beak’s pre boss line is written in chozo, you know:
“You disappoint me, My daughter”
"Daughter" seems to be similar to "Nadana", maybe with an h or two somewhere in the middle.
Bc of this video I feel confident that we could attempt to communicate with aliens before we kill them out of ignorance.
I don't know if I will be able to contribute anything to this but I am fascinated by what you guys have discovered thus far! I will definitely watch this video later when I have time to sit down and focus on it! ❤️
thank you for sharing this information! 🤩
When I first played Dread and met Quiet Robe, I was so excited when I realized that the Chozo language wasn't gibberish and had a potential translation.
The message on the alphabet screen is "Please don't crop us out", for those wondering. Make sure these guys get their due credit!
Funny how many alphabets in these games use the 26 equivalent letters
I wonder if this language will also appear in Metroid Prime 4.
Now I know what my tattoo will be. It'll be my name in Chozo. 😍
This video gives me life
Awesome for a Additional DnD language puzzle
My fiancé pointed out that the Chozo spoken language sounds very much like Hebrew. Seeing as Mercurysteam is a Spanish company there could be some mixture of Spanish to Hebrew. Hope that helps!
Arab I've been told
I'd love to see the faces of the devs when they see the community (you) is decrypting and exploring this.
Time to learn ANOTHER fictional alien font plus a few phrases that are original to and make this second alien font into a full on language
The first was the Teoran alphabet, from Gwain Saga, which is really just a font. But NOW, I have dread's chozo, and with this knowledge, which dare I say knowledge is power...
Hadar sen olmen
Edit: surprised at how the auto captions captated the spoken chozo, I was able to write them down in both teoran and the captions' romanized interpretations, along with translations for each. I'm more interested in learning an obscure bird man language than actual Italian lol
Alien bird language does seem like an interesting thing to learn, tho
Huh, wasn't expecting to see a fan of Gwain Saga elsewhere lol. And now that you say this, I feel I must track down the font and watch it all again...
@@mikato2 good luck
My theory is that the chozo name for sr388 is the aeion planet as they found it first and everything on the planet runs on it
I want to be able to text with these characters
I'm thinking all forms of "to be" like "am", "is", and "are" are "SEN" in Chozo. When Quiet Robe says "I am Quiet Robe" he says "SEN" in the middle of that. Note that he doesn't use the "SEN" when it's attached to other verbs though like when he says "the chozo who attacked you IS CALLED ..." he doesn't use "SEN", this makes sense because in many other languages this is done using a different tense of the verb instead.
Maybe he opted for 'the name of...'?
Edit: nvm, that would still call for Sen, wouldn't it?
It may be a case of saxon genitive.
@@burningadri6775 but then it would not be the same thing op said. If he said "my name is Quiet Robe", this is the same "is" (SEN) as "power is everything"
@@joaoassumpcao3347 I realised it after posting and made the edit.
they should release how to speak book for the chozo language, that would be rly nice
perhaps in said book are lore bits and facts written in chozo, and you can translate that over the book
by the end you got many cool facts and lerned chozo
It crossed my mind that SR388 would be The Green Planet while ZDR might be The Purple Planet, the unknown words referring to their colors when viewed from space.
Idk what I love more. The fact that some fans put their heads together to figure this out, or if developers put this much thought into world building.
Great video, very interesting process
There's another t-shirt that you got if you wanted from Amazon, also everything written in Chozo.
Thanks to your Alphabet I can now say it says "Metroid Nabuvar" and considering this is the only thing on the t-shirt with the exception of the Switch and Metroid Dread Logo, I assume that Nabuvar means Dread in Chozo!
When I played Dread, I had the same reaction to seeing those glyphs. "OOHHHH, I WANNA KNOW WHAT THEY SAY!"
This is incredibly fascinating!! Thank you!!
In the recent Tetris 99 Metroid Dread themed trailer Nintendo revealed a count down in this chozo text.
I am happy a video like this exists when I saw the Chozo dialogue scene I really hoped someone would find a way to speak it. It’s like speaking Klingon from Star Trek
Interesting in Metroid Chozo language I find other symbols in Metroid Prime Trilogy and Other M I figured out what it means in each game
I find it so cool. Maybe Metroid will have its own recurring alphabet much like the Hylian now. You guys are awesome for this great discovery!
It is super cool that the language is consistent between other M and dread, but the writing sytle is different, maybe because it is a different tribe.
So after watching this, I decided to take a crack at the Ferenia hieroglyphs. Only ended up getting 3 whole words decyphered, the rest were hard to make out with the quality of images I been able to use
Metroid fans are gonna start speaking chozo in public and the people and government's gonna think we're invaders.
I've always been fascinated by things like this. I translated everything in "Aquaria" years ago and I was pretty proficient in reading Aurabesh in "Star Wars: The Old Republic". It gets WAY more complicated when it's not a direct letter for letter substitution though.
"Please dont crop us out" nice guys x)
Awesome and Dope!!!!! HADAR SEN OLMEN!
this is super cool! I was relistening to the scenes with spoken language and thought it was rally cool to see it was consistent. Realizing what Raven Beak said at the beginning was the same at the end with the translation then seeing hadar was also the word for power that Quiet Robe said. I love that this was not just nonsense. I also really like that the language flips the triangles to make them fit nicely together. It makes the language feel like it has an elegance to it.
This is some ‘Atlantis: The Lost Empire’ level shit.
I’m astounded.
I'm beginning to think the 15 year wait was to give them enough time to fully develop the Chozo language
This is so fascinating. Thanks for translating!!
I hope Nintendo releases some sort of translation guide.
The real genius is if you speed pass adams speach, every word he says is Chozo and holds some secret
At least I think, it sounds like some of the words mentioned here~ but its off
Maybe every first completed word, and since the language is flipped, maybe the first word of the first sentence then the last word of the next one~
I'm overthinking this lol
Perfect choice of Music for this masterpiece.
It's likely that Chozo is simply a Re-Lex of English (in other words, it has the exact or nearly same Grammatical structure as English does, just with its vocabulary replaced.) but I still find this enjoyable, and particularly interesting.
It makes sense to have it as a Re-Lex of English as Metroid is most popular in English speaking countries, but Mercury Steam is Spanish, and Nintendo is Japanese, so it makes me wonder if they have any other inspiration for it outside of that, and if it will be any more complex or different from English in any way.
I come from a background of being a massive Star Wars nerd to the point I have learned much of Mando'a, the fictional language of the Mandalorians, as well as having a general interest in the English language as a whole. Mando'a is also a simple Re-Lex of English with a few small changes, such as removing gender. In which case, the speaker would simply insert another specific gender word to identify gender should it be necessary. For an example, the word "Buir" means "Parent", so if a distinction were necessary, they would say "Buir Jagyc" for "Father" or literally "Male Parent" and "Buir Dalyc" for "Mother" or literally "Female Parent." So I find myself massively excited to see that Mercury Steam put in so much effort to give us a spoken language for the Chozo, even if it is a simple Re-Lex, and it will be really interesting to see if it has any complexities or slight differences from English, similarly to Mando'a.
On another note, I've found in the past that some people may find Re-Lex's to be lazy writing, to which I say go back to reading the Silmarillion or watching The Next Generation you crazy Tolkienite and/or Trekkie, not everybody has the ability to just write an entirely unique language for a fictional species in a Fantasy or Sci-Fi story. If they actually did that for the Chozo, the 15 year wait for Metroid Dread would have been closer to a 30 year wait. Re-Lex's are great, because it allows us to very easily create/learn a fictional language and be nerdy about it without spending too much time and resource on what, for many, wouldn't amount to be more than a hobby. Inclusivity and accessibility are nice in things like this. It is really cool to have a fully distinct language like the Klingon and Elvish languages, but that is an unrealistically high expectation to put into this sort of world building in my opinion.
They have some really unique pronounciation and i will call everything based on chozo now.
Metroid = mathroid
Raven beak = ashkar behek
Samus aran = thamus arlan
I hope somebody makes a font to use these symbols 😂
I love how Nintendo made up a spoken language. It won't be long before fans start learning the spoken language.
the 5 letters that appears when the game is loading are "c h a d o", so "chado" means loading
I don't know about any of the very cool language and etymology studies y'all have put into this, but when it is spoken out loud the Chozo language reminds me of the Navajo language.
It's interesting that the cutscene uses grammatical articles. You see, the Hylian scripts from Zelda games are basically Japanese but with different symbols. The phonetics are the same, including any translation errors that might occur with 'r' and 'l' when trying to figure it out in Roman letters. However, Japanese and some other eastern langauges, don't have articles. They make no distinction between 'a pen' or 'the pen', it's just 'pen' and if you want to point to it, it's 'this pen', 'that pen' or 'that pen over there'.
This creates a new complication: Sentence structure. Japanese sentence structure uses the verb at the end of the sentence rather than directly to a noun. Which means that we can't be sure that translating each word seperately will result in proper clean English or just the assumption of English. But Quiet Robe's pauses do match the sentence so perhaps it's pretty close to English or general Germanic sentence structures. Latin-derived languages are also possible, but French puts adverbs after the noun and I don't know how it goes in Spanish.
To dive even deeper, his pronunciation of names and words we know isn't the same. The way he says 'Samus Aran' is more like 'sɑːmʊs ɑːrlɑːn' and 'metroid' as 'mɑːθrɔɪd'. And as the Chozo use symbolic names for themselves and what they are known for at birth. I think SR388 would be The Acid Planet and ZDR perhaps the Storm Planet. Otherwise it could be the names of colors but the Chozo went through space far and wide, I think they'd run out of unique color names by then.
This is amazing, I love that it's an actual thing and how people found out and are pretty much decrypting it. Amazing.
Now i wanna take a class to learn the spoken language.... i will pay
I can’t help but wonder if anything found in the collectors edition art book would provide some clues
We can now speak Hylian and Chozo. Next on the list: Pianta (Piantese?)
The only thing I find weird is that in one of the final cutscenes when Raven Beak holds Samus by the throat, talking about being able to make clones of her, he says her name "Samus Aran" but in the language it doesn't sound as if he was saying her name. Maybe it's just difficult to hear right, but still.
This video is so cool!!!
It's really helpful that Chozo is a relex of English. I feel like it would have been way cooler (though a lot harder to translate) with its own grammar & syntax. But still, it's very cool.
loading screen contain a 5 letters words that spell CHAAO, possibly chozo for load/loading?
In Enum there’s a planetarium in the background. It has a spinning graphic with chozo characters written on the top and bottom. I attempted to translate it using this alphabet but even translated the words don’t appear to be English. Anyone have any ideas?
This is what I gleaned from Quiet Robe’s words.
“Xibalba” is the word however
“Dhamus Arlan” is the chozo pronunciation of Samus Aran
“Oxkon Berek” would be Raven Beak. (That’s how I’m spelling it I could be wrong. The x is pronounced like sh.)
“Mathroid” is Metroid.
I love discovering stuff like this, very similar to LoZ and the Sheikah language
Been trying to figure out any patterns for forming past tense verbs. Unfortuntately i haven't been able to find many instances where both the present and past tense of a verb are made available. Quiet Robe gives us a bit of insight here: in Chozo, take is "hasar", while took is "hasari". Use is "sadar", while used is "sadari". Have is "habar", while had is "habari".
Raven Beak gives us "ginu", which is do (Samus also says this word), while he also says "gini" for did. This seems to bear out for much of Quiet Robe's speech: the most common ways to form the past tense seem to either be to add an i at the end, or to replace the final vowel with an i. Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be the only way, as Quiet Robe says "sen maboris Ashkar Behek" for "is called Raven Beak".
Also, "to be" appears to be an irregular verb (of course). Is becomes "sen", but am/are becomes "man". And the past of "man" is "muvi".
Looks like all the teleport points are indicated not only by color but by a vowel, except the Cyan one, I can’t make it out with this index
I hope it stands for All your base are belong to us.
I think that “you” or “ata” draws from the Japanese “anata” or the more rude “anta.” Just something I’ve consistently noticed.
Was looking at the Metroid Dread Hoodie and the bottom word on the front translates to Natuvar apparently. So it's written like:
METROID
NABULAR
Real curious as to what the bottom word means.
Kinda insane, make sure to inform the biggest Metroid wikis about this as well :D
Simetric the way is printed in the stone. the most interesting
1:27 what/where is this long sleeve? I can’t find it anywhere online.
I've been looking for it too. Lemme know if you find anything