Cypher Language: Difference between revisions

{{trope}}

 

Works from non-English-speaking countries may do the same with their own language or alphabet, but not always.

 

 

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* Digital World writing in the first three seasons of ''[[Digimon]]'' is also a cypher of katakana. (The fourth season only uses three or four symbols.)

* ''[[Haibane Renmei]]'' has an ancient alphabet which is basically written sign language. {{spoiler|The sign language actually appears first, and is said to be indecipherable by those not in the know, but Rakka finds a gravestone with a familiar name written on it and recognizes the symbols as hand gestures.}}

* ''[[Dog Days]]'' has a cypher of katakana. That they use to spell English words.

* ''[[Rave Master]]'' has the dead language Symphonian, which substitutes hiragana for characters made up of English letters. For example, the symbol for 'ka' becomes a sideways 'K' with an upside-down 'A' on top of it.

* [[Marvel Universe|Marvel]]'s Doopspeak (the language spoken by the character Doop from ''[[X-Force|X-Statix]]'') was a substitution cipher using the font "Roswell Wreckage".

* The ''[[Blue Beetle]]'' scarab's language was originally represented by a substitution cipher, but eventually transitioned over to English. In a clever move, during the transition, they used an alien-looking font in a style that resembled the substitution cipher, but whose characters could be made out as the Roman alphabet.

* In ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|X Men]]'', one member of the Starjammers' thought are expressed in what looks like a cipher, but if viewed carefully, turns out to be very oddly-lettered English.

* ''The Shadow Strikes'' issue 1 did this for what was supposed to be Russian.

** This is blatantly stated in the ''[[The Lord of the Rings|LotR]]'' title page. The Cirth at the top reads "The Lord of the Rings, translated from the red book" while the Tengwar at the bottom continues, "of Westmarch by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien. Herein is set forth the history of the War of the Ring and the return of the King as seen by the Hobbits."

** Most of the people who use tengwar in [[Real Life]] are using it in this context, rather than using it to write actual Elvish languages, though the better ones at least make a set of phonetic rules to write English in rather than substituting English spelling.

* There was a mystery novel that did this in what was supposed to be Coptic. (I forget the name or the author, but the protagonist is a female lawyer in 1880s San Francisco.)

* Frequently found in the works of [[Edgar Rice Burroughs]]: most of his alien/non-human languages come with alphabets that, regardless of their often bizarre appearance, are simple ciphers that map directly to the Roman alphabet.

 

* The Hebrew alphabet is used for this purpose in the Aussie version of 'The Amazing Race'.

* The creators of ''[[Stargate]]'' made a cypher to function as the Ancient language during production of ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]''. It even fed back into the main series, though obviously episodes from before the premiere of Atlantis don't use the actual cypher, but are just "made up as we go" blocky-looking symbols. Stargate Universe uses the cypher, too, drawing most attention to the numbers of the countdown clock. Enterprising viewers have [http://www.thescifiworld.net/fonts.htm created a font called "Anquietus"] and some fans are fluent in written Ancient (which isn't as hard as it sounds; it could easily be learned in a day and mastered in a week).

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

* Used for elvish and dwarven scripts in some [[Forgotten Realms]] products.

 

** In ''[[Quake II]]'', it was just English in a [[Foreign Looking Font]].

* In ''[[Space Quest]] 3'', Roger can view a secret message for getting a high score on Astro-Chicken. If he uses his Secret Decoder Ring on it, he discovers it's an English cipher.

* Precursor/Old Precursor, a substitution cypher from the ''[[Jak and Daxter]]'' series.

* Similiarly, the ''[[Ultima]]'' series employed a number of these (such as Britanic runes, Gargish, and Ophidian), which were mostly substitution cyphers given in the manuals. It used to be that being able to read Britanic runes marked you as a dedicated (retro)gamer, while knowing D'ni marked you as insane. That was years ago, so both are now likely to signify the latter.

* ''[[Fire Emblem Tellius|Fire Emblem: Path Of Radiance]]'' and ''[[Fire Emblem Tellius|Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn]]'' use a strange curvy alphabet for the "old tongue", which is used primarily by heron and wolf laguz. It's a cypher, but the game never provides the key. Translating it can produce a form of [[Bilingual Bonus]]; particularly Leanne's support dialogue, where most of what she says is actually her complaining about not being able to speak modern languages well (which actually [[Fridge Logic|doesn't make a lot of sense if you support her with someone who speaks to the old tongue.]])

* The script in ''Aquaria'', a substitution cipher.

** Lazy players can replace the graphics file holding the glyphs for the Aquarian alphabet with one containing English letters, and have almost all of the text in the game translated, except for a few bits that are painted into the background scenery.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Dialogue]]

[[Category:Language Tropes]]