Sheikah (Language)

Sheikah is a reoccuring language used predominately by the Sheikah in The Legend of Zelda series.^{[name references needed]}

Overview

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The Sheikah language is found on Sheikah architecture and artifacts, such as inside Ancient Shrines It functions mainly as a cipher of the Latin alphabet, with a few inconsistent and demonstrably optional exceptions. These exceptions include the use of full stops to separate sentences, and a hyphen between some phrases.

This grammatical structure allows for sentences to dramatically change their flow, either as a continuous string or as a more spacious and readable text. The full stop symbol functions identically to the English period character, as well as being able to break a sentence from another without any need for spacial punctuation. Three full stops in a row form the equivalent to English ellipsis (…), while spaces are completely omitted between words, forming a composite of simple words (such as with the instructions on the portcullis in the Keh Namut Shrine, "SLIDEUP"). In many cases, these simple phrase compositions have been shown to repeat without such punctuation, leaving no clear point for where the passages of text begin or end.

In supplementary material, such as the promotional "Calamity Ganon" tapestry included with the Limited and Master Edition versions of Breath of the Wild, the Sheikah language has been used to romanize the Japanese language.

The Sheikah language is systematically linear and angular in form, as all characters fit within an invisible, uniformly square shape. Because of this, it does not appear to thematically borrow from any known script. The Sheikah language seems to be foreign to Hylians, who instead use the sixth Hylian script. Indeed, corrupted portions of the Sheikah Slate are incapable of being transliterated to Link, instead appearing legibly in the Sheikah language.

Despite having their own writing system, Sheikah Monks are capable of communicating to Link with ease. As both the Sixth Hylian and the Sheikah scripts are ciphers of the Latin alphabet and are used to transcribe English, it may be that the Sheikah script is intended to simply be an alternate writing system to allow the Sheikah to communicate via text while excluding anyone unfamiliar with the cipher, befitting their secretive nature.