Deciphering Ancient Elvish

Finding hope beyond the journey's end

Hey! How do you show your passion?

For most of my life, I’ve found myself rather embarrassed when I liked anything at all. There is a streak of fear running down almost every single one of my personal preferences.

An evil spell woven into the depths of my soul.

Brittle spirit, broken mind, and lost cause, I surprised myself when that veil was lifted by an admittedly unlikely source: Frieren.

I began watching the show on a whim, feeling vaguely drawn to the art style despite having been removed from anything anime for years.

What followed is an experience I can only describe as enrapturing. I was captured by the story and the decades of shame and guilt washed away. There was no embarrassment in that pure joy.

I felt seen in an incredible way.

My choices and tastes in storytelling were not only justified, but widely acknowledged and appreciated.

Maybe it’s a little silly, but it’s not a stretch to say that emotion changed my life.

It certainly changed how I view myself.

Glimpsing Greatness

As luck would have it, I unknowingly joined the bandwagon just in time for a surge in hype and interest as the second season prepared for release.

I decided this was going to be the first time I chose to be close to the bone of a fandom. In the past, I would have been content to quietly consume and hide my heart, but something about all the emotions wrapped up in Frieren made me more committed.

That is the context for how I jumped into a new adventure with a thriving community.

Week after week, deep discussions, wild theories, and honest appreciation filling post after post with an infectious enthusiasm. More than enough positivity to make it through even the dullest of days.

Discord is one such place where that energy is particularly focused. An active online community of fans who have sought out each other.

So, when an episode aired and there was the slightest hint of a puzzle, some of us were quickly whipped into a flurry of activity.

And if it wasn’t obviously already, some may consider what follows to be in the spoiler territory. It’s relatively mild, all things considered, but I thought it better to warn than to not.

Everything began with nothing more than a few seconds and a couple lines of dialogue. The broader scope of the episode relatively unrelated to the prop, the stone tablet serving its narrative purpose more for what it was than what it said.

However, there was something significant in the details of the marks scrawling across the screen. If you didn’t catch it, the carvings on the tablet look deliberate and coherent.

And we were given a big clue.

The name, “Milliarde,” in a specific context, with the word being pointed out by a character.

It may not seem like much, but that was all it took. It was time to figure out whether this was truly a language or just background art.

And that was exactly what aloofRe, Raffinn, Dima, Rav, and I decided to do.

Decoding Language

Of the difficult tasks presented in those few frames of esoteric symbols, the first was figuring out what exactly we were really looking at.

By that I mean solving a few of the unknown variables needed to piece together the puzzle.

• Is there a logic to the symbols or is it just gibberish?

• Is this a full language or just a cipher?

• Are the symbols representing a known language?

In fiction, it’s not unusual to have nonsense symbols to represent languages. At the end of the day, we’re talking about a stage prop more than a real-life cultural artifact.

On the other end of the spectrum, it’s not unheard of to develop a fully fledged conlang for a piece of media. The most famous examples being the many scripts and languages invented by Tolkien, but there are countless others.

E.g. Na’vi for Avatar, Lang Belta for The Expanse, Dothraki for Game of Thrones, and Klingon for Star Trek.

A lesser known one I have a personal stake in is Atlantean, created by Mark Okrand of Klingon fame. Once upon a time, I even wrote about it on my old blog.

Dig Adlantisag — Digtem Adlantisag bashebenen du?

There are also a decent amount of books, movies, manga, and anime that opt for a middle ground with a cipher. A series of symbols or letters that have a one-to-one relation to an existing language.

E.g. Aurebesh from Star Wars, Al Bhed from Final Fantasy X, and Ri from To Your Eternity.

With only the name “MILLIARDE” to go off of, it wasn’t clear at first what we were dealing with.

So the search began by finding any similar letters and mapping them to the known M, I, L, A, R, D, and E.

That resulted in something that looked at least a little hopeful.

There were still many more questions than answers, but it would all soon ramp up from there.

Shared Spirit

As a group of impassioned fans, the rest of the work was clear. First, a full tablet was put together so we could see the complete text.

There were more discussions about what exactly we were looking at and some fears around whether or not this was more than gibberish or background art. We also still needed to consider the possibility of a new conlang or languages none of us knew.

Frieren being produced in Japan, Japanese would not have been surprising. German having a big influence on the naming conventions used throughout the series was also a reasonable guess.

Luckily, as words began filling out, it became clear that the symbols were a cipher for English.

And with a whirlwind of activity in a little over an hour, we transliterated the tablet and revealed its hidden message.

It was an incredible experience having so much fun with other like-minded people. We found a creative spark in little more than a flash of a few frames. Working together with aloofRe, Raffinn, Dima, Rav, and others on Discord made the whole process of solving such a riddle all the more worthwhile.

With the letters decoded, the next step was figuring out how to use the alphabet. To make everything as accessible as possible, aloofRe took on that task of creating a font you can install on your device to actually type in Ancient Elvish!

• Ancientelvish.otf

• Ancientelvish.ttf

All this, of course, meant memes were immediately adapted into an Elvish secret code.

Perhaps the better use-case followed. "New translations” of the manga are now possible, with some extra Elvish flair.

A very satisfying conclusion to the whole endeavor, if there ever were one.

Beyond Beginning

While the tablet is decoded, the work isn’t completely done just yet.

Mirroring a real world issue that comes with discovering ancient scripts, there are still missing pieces. The stone tablet from the episode, the only example of Ancient Elvish we currently have, doesn’t contain every letter of the English alphabet.

We are missing K, Q, X, and Z.

The solution settled on was to simply use stylized Latin characters, but perhaps one day we’ll have an official, completed alphabet to play around with as well.

In the meantime, I love how we were drawn together by that shared love for Frieren and deciphering scripts.

Some may even be tempted to call it just a hobby for seeking out obscure magic.

No matter what’s left to be found, I can safely say the journey was a wholly enriching one. A window into how embracing passion leads to incredible moments with strangers.

The adventure may be far from over, but it’s comforting to see how, little by little, I’m letting that evil spell strangling my soul be replaced by a sunglade full of flowers.

Until next time,

—JMB