5285


In _Hunter x Hunter_ , episode 97, Feitan activates his nen ability.

What language is the vertical text on the right?

[![enter image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BNZGT.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BNZGT.png)[![enter
image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5v8vF.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5v8vF.png)[![enter
image description
here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/q82Oy.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/q82Oy.png)


CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-09-22T23:09:34.767
5284
2021-02-14T11:37:04.897
2017-12-18T01:20:30.113
35019
2364
question
hunter-x-hunter
What language does Feitan speak when activating Pain Packer?


According to [the _Hunter x Hunter_
Wiki](http://hunterxhunter.wikia.com/wiki/Feitan):

> Feitan's first language is Chinese; he speaks in sentence fragments in
> Japanese while switching to his native tongue when angered.

Given this, and the text is written in either Japanese kanji or Chinese (as
[@kuwaly](https://anime.stackexchange.com/users/93/kuwaly) beat me to pointing
out), and the fact that there is a Japanese translation provided, I'm going to
conclude that the text is written in Chinese. (There may be some fragments of
Japanese, but I somewhat doubt that.)


CC BY-SA 3.0
2013-09-22T23:35:49.453
5285
2013-09-22T23:35:49.453
2017-04-13T12:54:49.090
-1
274
5284
answer


I believe he is speaking inverted Japanese, and the text on the right is
Japanese kanji. I'm Chinese, and I can read Chinese characters, so hopefully,
my brain isn't exploding and I'm right. :)


CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-01-08T18:54:51.440
6805
2014-01-08T18:54:51.440
3267
5284
answer


Preface: I don't know anything about _Hunter x Hunter_ , so I have no idea
what language Feitan is "actually" speaking in the context of the show. It is
entirely possible (as far as I know) that Feitan speaks Chinese, and that the
captions are supposed to represent some variant of Chinese that exists in-show
or whatnot.

That said: the captions that accompany Feitan's speech are most likely **not a
real language**. I know Japanese well enough to tell you it's not Japanese; a
bit of gruntwork in Chinese and Vietnamese character dictionaries suggests it
isn't either of those; and if it isn't Chinese, it can't be Korean hanja
either, since hanja are mostly identical to Chinese hanzi. It's _possible_
that the script there is a more esoteric derivative of hanzi, e.g. Sawndip,
but I doubt that's the case.

As evidence of this, we observe that the captions contain the character 々,
found only in Japanese, as well as a number of other probably-untypeable
characters, which are not found in Japanese. Since the language must be 1.)
Japanese; and 2.) not Japanese, we are forced to conclude that language is not
a language at all.

That said, the characters in the caption are very _evocative_ of hanzi
(particularly insofar as they appear to be built from standard Chinese
radicals), and were probably consciously designed to appear Chinese while not
actually being Chinese. Note that some of the characters that appear _are_
real characters in Chinese - in particular, 了, 下, and 乃. The rest don't seem
to be, though.


CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-03-26T12:25:27.653
8277
2014-03-26T12:25:27.653
1908
5284
answer


The characters on the right are gibberish that is written to look like
Chinese. As many have said, some characters used are viable in Japanese, some
viable in Modern Chinese, possibly some viable as obscure ancient Chinese not
sure, but mostly it's constructed from legitimate parts to form gibberish.
It's the equivalent of writing "angsk ville ast, arg be yous being may kis
dangeroust stranger ous" Kind of looks like English with some viable parts to
anyone who doesn't know English, but is generally gibberish.


CC BY-SA 3.0
2014-11-02T12:09:17.607
14797
2014-11-02T12:09:17.607
8976
5284
answer


He speaks normal Japanese.. But backwards. You can see this clearly at 17:12
where the Japanese subtitles say "どうした" (do u shi ta) and he says "tashiudo"
(ta shi u do) which is what you would get if you read the hiragana backwards.


CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-03-13T23:40:00.117
20040
2015-03-14T22:42:24.160
2015-03-14T22:42:24.160
13219
13219
5284
answer


It's 100% Feitan talking backwards. If you don't believe, you can watch the
English dub aswell if you do not understand japanese at all. I can clearly
tell you it's not Chinese because I'm Chinese myself. In the English dub
version, you can clearly hear them talking backwards.


CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-06-26T04:42:23.443
47567
2021-02-14T11:37:04.897
2021-02-14T11:37:04.897
2516
41271
5284
answer


Yeah, it's definitely not purely Chinese, Chinese is my mother tongue and I've
never even seen some of these characters before. They do have the
characteristics of kanji and Chinese characters but I'm pretty sure the
creator wanted to make an entirely new language.


CC BY-SA 4.0
2021-02-14T11:31:29.627
61917
2021-02-14T11:37:00.117
2021-02-14T11:37:00.117
2516
58847
5284
answer