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I friggin' hate you right now.

0 (0%)

This is bloody impossible!

1 (11.1%)

I sort of want to toss you in a pit of venomous arachnids right now.

3 (33.3%)

I actually enjoy having the snot beat out of me by a bunch of words on a screen.

0 (0%)

I have the answer. It says, "Fuck you Karne."

5 (55.6%)

Total Members Voted: 9

[Karnewarrior]

Alright. So assuming we don't fall victim to one of the hundreds of horrible ways to end ourselves here on this planet, at some point we're going to definitely meet something else, probably way smarter about how it goes about doing things. Of course, when that day comes, we'll have to learn a completely alien language.

Well it happened, and we have a message they sent us, along with a small packet of what translations our translator managed to pick out before he was mysteriously killed and his work left unfinished. And so the United Government of Generic Earth Government Conglomerates decided to split the load and hire the entirety of Bay 12 for a whoppin .09$ a year!

Anyways, here's the packet, as sent:

Code: (This packet is a quote from a wise human being) [Select]

" Uoa ip a Monsi Liabra O Golwor, ang sun sihap im Alwhe ip sun sihap im Alworl"  ~Isaacun-Asimov

Code: (these are the rules our translator managed to figure out before he was shot, stabbed, beaten, poisoned, tranquilized, thrown off a helicopter, bitten by sharks, burned and buried alive) [Select]

--All nouns seem to have at least one adjective attached, some have more

--All nouns and adjectives are monosyllabic

--All names have a gender honorific attached, all of which are monosyallabic. Nouns that are not names of living beings do not have any honorific

--All A.L.I.E.N names are monosyllabic, however this is not a grammatical rule; they name themselves using existing words that describe them or their job

--Other honorifics, such as GOL (scientist), are separated with a hyphen, unless used as a base, in which case the second syllable denotes what exactly to extract from the base word (example: DAG meaning sanitation, and WOR, meaning work, means Sanitation worker, or sanitation plant.)

--Verbs can replace adjectives, but never nouns

-- Male and female honorifics are attached to the first name, and the surname is transormed into a meaningless honorific, at least when humans are involved

--Grammar and punctuation, unless otherwise stated, are indistinguishable from English

--Plurals use completely separate honorifics.

[Fenrir]

As this is hardly serious, I think this would be better suited to the forum-games section. You would probably get more replies there too. I wish there was a way I could type this so it would not sound so blunt and sarcastic. Imagine I am saying this in a pleasant voice of friendly concern, as that is how it sounds in my head, but it is not how it looks in writing.

[Karnewarrior]

Yeah, I was thinking about that too. I'll move it now.

[Zrk2]

This isn't an Enigma encryption, is it? Those are just evil. Looking at the layout, it can be a Ceasar cipher, and that's about where my knowledge of cryptography ends.

[NewsMuffin]

It's obviously a quote from Isaac Asimov.

[Fenrir]

Why did the aliens quote him? Why did they misspell his name?

[Karnewarrior]

This isn't an Enigma encryption, is it? Those are just evil. Looking at the layout, it can be a Ceasar cipher, and that's about where my knowledge of cryptography ends.

It's not a recognizable code at all. It was designed to be a unique language in and of itself.

Why did the aliens quote him? Why did they misspell his name?

Because he was a badass. And they didn't misspell it because that's how they write names. They're using an honorific to say that he's a dude, rather than a girl. It's all explained in the note.

[Grek]

"Uoa ip a Monsi Liabra O Golwor, ang sun sihap im Alwhe ip sun sihap im Alworl"  ~Issacun-Asimov


Golwor = Science worker or science building. Apparently that distinction is contextual?
This is definately an Asimov quote.
-un = an apparently meaningless, honorific. We can infer that it's the masculine singular declination, but that's only a guess, really. The aliens might have gotten his gender wrong, or even thought he was a group of people.
Alwhe and Alworl both share the prefix Al-
The phrase 'sun sihap im' is repeated twice, once preceeding Alwhe and once preceeding Alworl. That probably means that it's a prepositional phrase or something similar.
Monsi, Liabra, Alwhe and Alwor are all capitalized, indicating that they are probably noun phrases, or possibly even proper nouns.
I have no clue what Al- means.
Conjecture: If -l is a plural honorific, Alworl means "something workers" or "something workplaces"


Best guess so far at a translation:
Uoa or a [noun_1] [noun_2] and scientist, ang [adverb+verb] the Alwhe or [adverb+verb] the some kind of workers

[Karnewarrior]

closer, closer. Still not quite there yet. Start looking for things like it and is.

[Grek]

Without a larger body of text to base my guesses off, that's as good as I can do. Having more examples of the thing you're trying to learn the rules of helps alot.

[Blargityblarg]

I looked up Isaac Asimov quotes, and matched the grammar and the golwor, but I'll not spoil it for the rest of you.

[NewsMuffin]

I looked up Isaac Asimov quotes, and matched the grammar and the golwor, but I'll not spoil it for the rest of you.

That's how you do this, as opposed to working out the language.

[evilcherry]

I looked up Isaac Asimov quotes, and matched the grammar and the golwor, but I'll not spoil it for the rest of you.

That's how you do this, as opposed to working out the language.

It is the equivalent of a Rosetta stone.

(and its how a horde of anon toiled in vain for a week to decipher a set of runespeak, before someone matched a Faust quote and it was classified as a substitution cipher and practically decoded within a day.)

[Karnewarrior]

Exactly. This is going to be your reference tool, which is why I made it a recognizable quote.

[RedKing]

Ahh...so there will be more communications forthcoming?