My version of the font supports katakana input and also uses ligatures to support typing romaji, so you can enter 「ナラガ ハイリアゴカ ワカラナイヨウガナ」 or “naraga hairiagoka wakaranaiyougana” and get the text below: It maps some (but not all) of the characters rather arbitrarily to the English alphabet, which simply does not work well at all for a Japanese-compatible syllabary. The font looks good, but it doesn’t work. I recently got interested in being able to write some stuff in this script, but unfortunately the only font I could find (the so-called “Ancient Hylian” font available on ) was less than ideal for my purposes. Here is the full script with each character labeled in romaji: Each character represents a single syllable, with the exception of the character for the letter n, the only consonant which can appear at the end of a Japanese word. Specifically, this script is called Modern Hylian and is basically a cipher for Japanese.
Perhaps you have wondered if it really says anything? It features prominently throughout the game, written on signs, letters, and maps, and even appearing in speech boxes. If you’ve ever played Link’s cel-shaded seafaring adventure on the GameCube (or its HD remake), you’re no doubt familiar with the writing that is the subject of this post.
