The Chozo Language, Speculations, scholarly discussions

[ChozoMufin]

Nelieve it or not (although it's not unbelievable with me) I've done a little bit of research on my own into the Chozo language.

The findings are scarce, to make an understatement.

BUT, not nonexistent.

The only real "word" we know is "metroid," which means "ultimate warrior" in Chozo, allegedly. There's some conflicting data here, as one game says the GF named it that, another that it's a Chozo word. There's much debate over it, although I think it's safe to say that it's a legit Chozo word, because it's used by them in the manga, which was long before the GF would've discovered it.

That aside, the only other information we have are symbols and names.

Known names:
- Old Bird
- Grey Voice
- Platinum Chest
- De'la
- Dryn
- Ou-Qua
- Chozo Searcher

Some of them are obviously translations, but we have a few native ones, which gives us a small picture about what their language sounds like.

As for the symbols: in my studies, it seems that there are two forms.

One I call "Zebesian," the other "Tallonese." Just names I half made up.

The Zebesian ones are more angular, with almost consistent right angles in the symbols. I have a few pages of notes on the findings (entirely from Zero Mission), which of course will be impossible to interpret because we have no "Rosetta Stone" to base the symbols off of phonetically or in meaning. These symbols are also more congruent to the style of Zebesian architecture (depicted in the manga and in Zero Mission (which by the way I've found to be based heavily on the manga in style and artwork)), which is based off of rectangular prisms with cut corners.

The "Tallonese" is more what you might expect from Chozo, it looks ancient, cryptic, more slants and curves and such, also matching with the Tallonese style of architecture, which, while somewhat angular, is somewhat more elegant than the Zebesian architecture.

I had taken down all the symbols I can find (so far mostly from Metroid Prime), when I made somewhat of a startling discovery. In Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, several of the symbols in the communication device in the gunship match the symbols from Metroid Prime! It became apparent that Samus' language of choice is Chozo, as she must have installed the language into the GF-made ship as the default, or something of that sort.

So where does this leave us? Which symbols should be taken as "their language"? And indeed which architecture is more archetypal of their species' works?

This thread is, of course, meant to be a discussion, and I hope over the course of it we can answer some questions in as scholarly a manner as possible.

Those who are interested, please respond.

[boymonkey130]

Haha. We could see if they were NEARLY as detailed as you think;

In Metroid Prime, there are actual bitmaps that show the 'chozo lore' on the walls, and then when you scan them it gives the translation.

Write them both down, and compare them to a few of the others. Lol.

It'd take a lot of work, but it's the only way I could see to get a real, defineable dictionary of at LEAST Chozo symbols.

[Cobalt]

Has it occurred to you that maybe the nintendo people just b.s. those writings?

[boymonkey130]

Yes. Yes it has.

But if, by chance, there IS some consistency, then it will be found in the largest possible untranslated->translated sampling.

Hopefully.

This post has been edited by boymonkey130 on Oct 7 2008, 10:05 PM

[ChozoMufin]

Oh, but do you not think that I have tried such a thing?

They symbols are garbage. There's maybe three or four different ones in random orders. This IS a case of b.s.ing their way, or so it seems.

There's obviously not much depth to any sort of official "language" that's there, but you have to think that one of the texture engineers put all this together, and had to be thinking of SOMETHING.

Plus there's the correlation between the Prime symbols and the Corruption symbols. That shows that they don't just consistently make up random symbols. At least not entirely.

[ChozoMufin]

Here's something interesting:




probably doesn't mean anything, but those symbols MIGHT have some significance, though i've never seen them on any chozo architecture.