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{{trope}}
The writers need a new language. But they don't want to actually invent a new language. So they make the "new" language a cipher of
Works from non-English-speaking countries may do the same with their own language or alphabet, but not always.
See also [[Wingdinglish]]. For when this happens to the language's grammar itself, see [[
{{examples}}▼
▲{{examples}}
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
* Digital World writing in the first three seasons of ''[[
* ''[[
* The runes of ''[[Madoka Magica]]''. Comes with three
* ''[[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.
== [[Comic Books]] ==
* ''[[The Legion of Super Heroes]]'' uses a substitution-cipher font to represent the future language Interlac; both the comics and [[Legion of Super
* ''[[
* [[Marvel Universe|Marvel]]'s Doopspeak (the language spoken by the character Doop from ''[[X
* 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.
* The "Symbion" alphabet in [http://www.misterkitty.org/extras/stupidcovers/stupidcomics117.html this] [[Merchandise-Driven]] comic from [[The Eighties]] is not only a substitution cipher for the English alphabet, but based closely on, of all things, the cipher used by the [[Brotherhood of Funny Hats|Freemasons]].
* In ''[[X
* ''The Shadow Strikes'' issue 1 did this for what was supposed to be Russian.
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== [[Literature]] ==
* [[Piers Anthony]] sometimes does this for the language barrier between Xanthians and Mundanes outside ''[[
* The [[
** Though this is only applicable for the codes along the bottom of the pages- in-universe, Colfer instead makes them completely seperate languages.
* [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Aurabesh Aurabesh] (sometimes Aurebesh) in ''[[Star Wars]]''. It has a few new characters for common two-letter combinations like "th", but whether they get used varies.
* ''[[Dinotopia]]'''s footprint alphabet, supposedly invented by small three-toed dinosaurs running on wet sand.
* Even [[
** 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.
* Converting the Hebrew characters of "golem language" statements in ''[[
* 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.
== [[Live
* 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).
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== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* When Games Workshop released [[Warhammer 40
* Used for elvish and dwarven scripts in some [[Forgotten Realms]] products.
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* Al Bhed from ''[[Final Fantasy X]]''. Happily, the cypher is designed so that the replaced letters can (usually) be pronounced phonetically and still sound like a real language, both in English and in Japanese. It had to be, since there are some voice-acted parts in Al Bhed.
** ''[[Final Fantasy X]]'' also features three written scripts, dubbed Spiran, Yevon, and Al Bhed by fans. They're all English alphabet ciphers.
* Hylian is like this in ''Zelda''. More specifically, it's a code for Japanese kana in ''[[The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
* In ''[[The Elder Scrolls]]'' series of PC games, Daedric is a substitution cypher of the alphabet, with symbols replacing letters. However, Daedric runes are not arranged like Latin letters - it's quite common to see writing in Daedric written vertically or with runes superimposed over others. In a similar vein, there's the Dwemer language seen in a few books (though it's completely meaningless, in that case), but becomes similar to Daedric cipher in ''Oblivion''.
* The dinosaur language "Saurian" in ''[[
* Melnics in ''[[
** Many Tales games have text which are cyphers, or in the extreme cyphers where the new letters actually look similar to they're English counterparts, making it actually fairly legible if you look hard enough.
* The "Galactic Alphabet" in the ''[[
* A ''[[Metroid Prime]] 2'' design sheet (viewable in one of the game's bonus galleries) gives a complete set of 26 three-dimensional Luminoth characters and their English alphabet equivalents. They actually work in-game; the Luminoth Lore images are 3-letters that have some relevance to the lore in question. Indeed, the last image in the game's bonus galleries is a very long message in Luminoth script. One that has sadly been untranslated, because translating 3D text on a 2D image is really hard.
* The Elites' language in the original ''[[Halo]]'' is English [[Subliminal Seduction|played backwards and distorted]]. In addition, backwards messages from the Gravemind are hidden in "Mausoleum Suite" from ''Halo 2'', and "Black Tower" and "Gravemind" from ''Halo 3''.
* The Strogg "Language" in ''[[Quake
** In ''[[
* 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.
* In ''[[Final Fantasy Unlimited]]'', the native language of Wonderland is a cipher of English. If you want the key, though, you'll have to track down the (out-of-print) artbook.
* 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
** The [[Bilingual Bonus]] with Volug's support reveals he is actually one of the funniest characters in the game. For example, wondering aloud if everyone would be so shocked as to stop fighting if he eats an enemy.
* 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.
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== [[Web Comics]] ==
* [http://www.ookii.org/egs/uryuom/ Uryuomoco] from ''[[
* Played literally with Haley's "cryptogram-speak" gibberish from ''[[The Order of the Stick
* Hannelore's [[Black Speech]] from [http://www.questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=1753 this] ''[[Questionable Content]]'' strip, which translates into {{spoiler|"I want to fill your scrotum with spiders and broken glass!"}}
* [[Homestuck]] uses a flipped version of the Daedric alphabet from [[The Elder Scrolls]] for its [[Our Trolls Are Different|Alternian]] script.
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* ''[[The Legion of Super Heroes]]'' uses a substitution-cipher font to represent the future language Interlac; both the comics and [[Legion of Super
* An alien language invented for sight gags in ''[[Futurama]]'' used this, being a straight letter-replacement for English. It would frequently show up as graffiti or on signs that viewers could interpret to get an extra joke. A second alien language (AL2, to obsessed fans) was invented in the second season, using a much more complicated mathematical substitution, because the writing staff are a bunch of massive [[
* The [[Canadian Series]] ''[[Dragon Booster]]'' has its dragon script. Again, it's a substitution-cipher font.
* According to [[Word of God]], the written language in ''[[
* ''[[Transformers]]: [[
== [[Real Life]] ==
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Dialogue]]
[[Category:Language Tropes]]
▲[[Category:Trope]]
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