33555


The activation chants (聖詠) for the Symphogear relics are somewhat peculiar. If
you've heard them, you likely wondered what was being said. If you've _read_
them (the "lyrics" were provided in the booklets accompanying the season 2 OST
discs), you're probably outright bamboozled.

  * **Ame-no-Habakiri** : Imyuteus amenohabakiri tron [OST 1 #10]
  * **Gungnir (Hibiki)** : Balwisyall nescell gungnir tron [OST 1 #3]
  * **Gungnir (Maria)** : Granzizel bilfen gungnir zizzl [OST 1 #6]
  * **Ichaival** : Killter ichaival tron [OST 2 #3]
  * **Airgetlam** : Seilien coffin airget-lamh tron [OST 3 #7 (Serena) / OST 6 #6 (Maria)]
  * **Shul Shagana** : Various shul shagana torn [OST 5 #5]
  * **Igalima** : Zeios igalima raizen tron [OST 6 #1]
  * **Shen Shou Jing** : Rei shen shou jing rei zizzl [OST 5 #5]
  * Also, the **Zesshou** (Superb Song / Swan Song / Climax Song):  
Gatrandis babel ziggurat edenal  
Emustolronzen fine el baral zizzl  
Gatrandis babel ziggurat edenal  
Emustolronzen fine el zizzl

Now, these don't look like any actual language (though I obviously can't claim
to know all languages that exist). Yet, sites like the Symphogear wikia claim
(or at least have, in the past, claimed) to translate the chants - for
example, Ichaival's chant [was given the translation "Evening draws in the
awakened
Ichaival"](http://symphogear.wikia.com/wiki/Ichaival?oldid=13362#Transformation_Chants).

Is it genuinely possible to translate the chants? If so, from what language or
languages are they translated? (In the context of the show, Sumerian or some
other old Mesopotamian language would make the most sense, because of Finé's
connections to the region.)

Auxiliary question: if, as I suspect, they are not translatable, by what
[citogenetic](https://xkcd.com/978/) process did these putative translations
come into being in the first place?


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senki-zesshou-symphogear
Are the Symphogear activation chants translatable?


The symphogear wiki actually has the translation for the zesshou. But if I had
to say for certain what language it is, I think the most likely is Sumerian.
Kadingir, the tower Fine used towards the end of first season, was said to be
an ancient Sumerian word meaning gateway to the gods. Fine built the
symphogear and the tower, so it would make sense if both involved the same
language, and there the unified language lost to humanity could very well be
Sumerian.


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I haven't watched this show, but I used to be a linguistics nerd, and I'm
highly skeptical of the claim that these chants are written in actual
Sumerian. I think they're just a mishmash of English and English-looking
nonsense.

First, the case against the Sumerian theory. Disclaimer 1: I'm assuming that
these passages are appearing as the creators intended and we don't have a case
like the disaster in the Del Rey release of Negima Volume 6, where we had
appendices full of complete nonsense being passed off as Greek because the
translators had tried to transliterate the Greek into the Roman alphabet based
on Akamatsu's transliteration of the Greek into katakana. Disclaimer 2: I'm no
expert on Sumerian. But these passages don't pass the sniff test.

### The phonology doesn't match the postulated Sumerian phonology

Let's look at a passage of transliterated Sumerian:

> An adab to Bau for Luma (Luma A)  
>  1\. dumu an-na an gal ki gal-ta šag4 kug-ga-ni im-mi-in-pad3-de3  
>  2\. nam-nin kalam-ma-kam bi2-in-tum2-en  
>  3\. dba-u2 dumu an-na an gal ki gal-ta  
>  4\. šag4 kug-ga-ni im-mi-in-pad3-de3  
>  5\. nam-nin kalam-ma-kam bi2-in-tum2-en  
>  6\. den-lil2-le e2-kur za-gin3-ta  
>  7\. ki-sikil ama dba-u2 igi zid mu-un-ši-in-bar  
>  8\. /en\ dnin-ĝir2-su gal-bi mu-un-na-an-du7  
>  9\. kur gal den-lil2-le e2-kur za-gin3-ta  
>  10\. ki-sikil ama dba-u2 igi zid mu-un-ši-in-bar

(From [http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-
bin/etcsl.cgi?text=c.2.3.1&display=Crit&charenc=gcirc#](http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-
bin/etcsl.cgi?text=c.2.3.1&display=Crit&charenc=gcirc#) at [Oxford
University's Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian
Literature](http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/). The transliteration is described
[here](http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/edition2/cuneiformwriting.php))

Notice what's missing? There are no initial clusters, like we see in
_granzizel_ and _tron_. There are no dipththongs, as we see in _seilien_ and
_raizen_. There is no _f_ , as we see in _bilfen_ and _coffin_ , or _v_ , as
we see in _various_ , or _o_ , as we see in _zeios_ and _shou_ , or _w_ or _y_
, as we see in _balwisyall_. There seem to be no doubled _l_ 's, like we see
in _kellter_ , or _c_ , as in _nescell_.

> [...] syllable initial consonant clusters were prohibited by Sumerian
> phonotactics [...]
>
> — [Aleksi Sahala, "Sumero-Indo-European Language
> Contacts"](http://www.ling.helsinki.fi/~asahala/asahala_sumerian_and_pie.pdf),
> page 11.

(There is some argument on this point. Cuneiform is a mixed
logographic/syllabic writing system—a little like Japanese, actually. Most
sources state there were no initial consonant clusters, but [_Encyclopedia of
Linguistics_](https://books.google.com/books?id=27JOMobauYAC&pg=PA1046&lpg=PA1046&dq=sumerian+phonotactics&source=bl&ots=lUfPx8ALat&sig=M1QWrppiLHSLLjK4Py4pBjc8gVw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiQve3R5pHNAhVMRVIKHe1ABtIQ6AEIITAB#v=onepage&q=sumerian%20phonotactics&f=false)
says that although the cuneiform system "precludes the writing of initial and
final consonantal clusters, it is quite likely that Sumerian did have them."
We know this is true of Mycenaean Greek written in [Linear
B](http://www.ancientscripts.com/linearb.html), for instance—like English
written in the Japanese system, a Greek word like _khrusos_ is written in
Linear B as _kuruso_.)

> The vocalic system is quite simple: /a/, /e/, /i/, /u/. The possible
> existence of an /o/ vowel remains unsubstantiated.
>
> — [_Encyclopedia of
> Linguistics_](https://books.google.com/books?id=27JOMobauYAC&pg=PA1046&lpg=PA1046&dq=sumerian+phonotactics&source=bl&ots=lUfPx8ALat&sig=M1QWrppiLHSLLjK4Py4pBjc8gVw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiQve3R5pHNAhVMRVIKHe1ABtIQ6AEIITAB#v=onepage&q=sumerian%20phonotactics&f=false),
> page 1046

And

> To the best of today’s mainstream science, Sumerian consists of the
> following consonants:  
>  { b , d , g , p , t , k , m , n , ĝ , l , r , h , s , z , š , () }
>
> — [Ioannis Kenanidis, "Yet Another Suggestion about the Origins of the
> Sumerian
> Language"](http://www.macrothink.org/journal/index.php/ijl/article/viewFile/4107/pdf_31),
> page 31

Because Sumerian is incredibly ancient—it's the first known written
language—and so much of it has come down to us through Akkadian scribes, who
kept using it after it was dead because they thought it was cool, and because
of the difficulties with the writing system that I alluded to above, there's a
ton we don't know about it. No one believes the reconstructed phonology is
100% correct, or even 90% correct. But what we see here is too far off base to
be taken seriously as an attempt to write Sumerian according to a
reconstructed phonology.

### You can see where they cribbed from

Whatever language this is, it includes the English words _various_ and
_coffin_ , as well as _killter_ , which looks a lot like _kilter_ , as in "off
kilter". The word _baral_ in the swan song looks like it comes from Hebrew בלל
(balal), which [means "to confuse" or "to
mix"](http://biblehub.com/hebrew/1101.htm) and is [apparently the source of
the word "Babel"](http://www.abarim-
publications.com/Meaning/Babel.html#.V1SxLZPyuRs). It uses the English form of
_ziggurat_ ; the Akkadian form is
[_ziqqurat_](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggurat), while "ziggurat" comes
from the Hebrew form [זיגוראט (zygwrʼt)](https://glosbe.com/en/he/ziggurat).

That doesn't automatically disqualify it as a real language; after all, in the
Australian language Mbabaram, [_dog_ means
"dog"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mbabaram_language#Word_for_.22dog.22).
But, combined with the widespread use of English for mysterious and exotic
things in anime, this makes me highly suspicious of any claim that the
sentences are Sumerian or any other language.

Aside from that, the sentences conform remarkably well to English phonology.
Almost all of these words are easily pronounceable to an English speaker. The
ones that look a little weird, like _zeios_ and _rei_ , show some pretty clear
Japanese influence.

### Machine systems can't make heads or tails of it

I fed all the activation chants and the swan song to Google Translate and
[Translated.net Labs's language detector](http://labs.translated.net/language-
identifier/), both together and individually. I wasn't expecting it to
translate them, but I was hoping it would detect what language they were.

As a side note, machine translation still sucks, but this kind of language
detection is supposed to be pretty good; Russel and Norvig claim in
_Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach_ that computer systems can
identify languages, even based on short texts like "Hello world" and "Wie geht
es dir", with greater than 99% accuracy ( _AIMA_ 3ed., page 862).

None of these systems can detect Sumerian or Akkadian, but they can detect
most modern languages, even some quite obscure ones. The general consensus was
that the activation chants have a Germanic flavor (Google Translate pegged
them as English, even after I deleted the words _various_ and _coffin_ , while
another service took them as Frisian, a Germanic language closely related to
English), while the swan song was taken as Indonesian. Google Translate
insisted that both texts together were English, while Translated.net took both
texts together as
[Sundanese](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sundanese_language).

For comparison, I took a passage from Shakespeare's _Titus Andronicus_ and a
few lines from The Who's "Call Me Lighting", shoved them together, and fed
them to Translated.net:

> so, so; now sit: and look you eat no more than will preserve just so much
> strength in us as will revenge these bitter woes of ours. marcus, unknit
> that sorrow-wreathen knot: thy niece and i, poor creatures, want our hands,
> and cannot passionate our tenfold grief with folded arms. this poor right
> hand of mine is left to tyrannize upon my breast; who, when my heart, all
> mad with misery, beats in this hollow prison of my flesh, then thus i thump
> it down.
>
> hey little girl who's dancing so lightly, my xke is shining so brightly, the
> noose around us is slowly tightening, i'm gonna show you why they call me
> lightning

English, English, and more English. It defies my suspension of disbelief to
think that if these passages were all the same language, there would be so
much confusion about what language that was.

I have no idea what algorithm Google Translate uses; Translated.net seems to
use some kind of nearest neighbors algorithm.

### The "translations" are absurd

The translation of Ichaival's chant seems to have been removed from the wikia
sometime between when this question was asked and now, which probably doesn't
say much for its authenticity. But let's take a look at the one in the OP:

_Killter ichaival tron_ -> Evening draws in the awakened Ichaival

Since all the chants end with _tron_ , that has to be something that makes
sense in every chant. Based on the context, I'm going to say that has to be
"awakened"; it _is_ an activation song, so it makes sense that they would all
be "awakened". So _Ichaival tron_ means "awakened Ichaival". So we can
postulate that this language puts modifiers after nouns, like Spanish and
Irish.

Then what does _killter_ mean? It has to mean _evening draws in_. But this is
linguistically absurd; it violates [constituent
structure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constituent_\(linguistics\)). _draws
in_ is a verb, while _evening_ is a noun. _killter_ can't literally mean
_evening draws in_ in a real language (if it does, we've got the makings of a
real whopper of a paper in theoretical syntax here—it'll be almost to
theoretical syntax what those particles that traveled faster than light would
have been to relativity).

_killter_ therefore must mean either _evening_ or _draws in_ , with the other
element implied or indicated in some way by the morphology. So we have a
language where you can just say _draws in_ , and everyone automatically
assumes you meant _evening draws in_ , or a language where you can just say
_evening_ , and everyone assumes you meant _evening draws in_. Some languages,
at least in their poetry, do allow you to get incredibly terse like this.
Still...I'm not buying it. It reminds me too much of [Helge K Fauskanger's
analysis of Auld Elvish from _Bored of the
Rings_](http://folk.uib.no/hnohf/auldelv.htm).

### Conclusion

I'm not convinced these are passages from a real language, or even from a
somewhat sensible conlang like the [Hymnos
language](http://conlang.wikia.com/wiki/Hymmnos) from the _Ar Tonelico_
series. All my instincts are telling me they're just gibberish courtesy of the
people who gave us [a determination to
fist](https://anime.stackexchange.com/q/32546/7579). I wish I knew where the
"translations" came from or why they spread around the online anime community,
a community generally obsessed with the minutiae of dead languages, which
[surprised the Japanese production staff of Madoka](http://wiki.puella-
magi.net/Deciphering_the_runes#Trivia) with its determination to translate the
runes.


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Inspired by [Evilloli's excellent
answer](https://anime.stackexchange.com/a/33555/), I decided to figure out
where these "translations" came from.

* * *

After clicking through a lot of diffs on the Symphogear wikia, I was able to
trace most of the "translations" back to [wikia user
Kanade2000](http://symphogear.wikia.com/wiki/Message_Wall:Kanade2000) \-
diffs:
[Ichaival](http://symphogear.wikia.com/wiki/Ichaival?diff=8056&oldid=8055),
[Ame-no-
Habakiri](http://symphogear.wikia.com/wiki/Ame_no_Habakiri?diff=prev&oldid=8054),
[Gungnir](http://symphogear.wikia.com/wiki/Gungnir?diff=prev&oldid=8060). When
asked ["I couldn't help but notice you post the translations for the
Transformation lyrics and the Zessho. If you could, could you tell me how you
translated them?"](http://symphogear.wikia.com/wiki/Thread:3283), the user
replied "using old norse dictionary that I found in my city library.i also
have a skandinavian one and a latin one".

This answer does not inspire confidence in the user's linguistic faculties,
particularly when you notice that the same user [also tried to change the
romanization of 絶刀 _zettou_ to
"zetsukatana"](http://symphogear.wikia.com/wiki/Thread:3821) (only a rank
amateur would consider combining the _on_ -reading _zetsu_ with the _kun_
-reading _katana_ ).

These, I think, we can chalk up to a buffoon on the internet.

* * *

[The translation for the
Zesshou](http://symphogear.wikia.com/wiki/Zesshou?diff=8328&oldid=8090),
however, comes from [wikia user
Sylphfarn12](http://symphogear.wikia.com/wiki/User:Sylphfarn12) , and linked
[G keyword 24](http://www.symphogear-g.com/introduction/keyword_24.php) (絶唱
"Zesshou") as a reference. However, nothing in the text of the keyword page
has anything to do with the actual text of the Zesshou. I have no idea how
this user came up with their "translation". Buffoonery seems likely.

(A different buffoon in the comments of the page indicates - with a startling
degree of confidence - that ["Its Basque or Malay can't remember
which"](http://symphogear.wikia.com/wiki/Zesshou#comm-4290). Another user
[rules out Malay in a
reply](http://symphogear.wikia.com/wiki/Zesshou#comm-4299). So it must be
Basque, right? Mission Accomplished!)

* * *

This, I hope, serves as an object lesson in the dangers of trusting wikias.


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to be honest I believe that the idea was that there use to be a common tongue
so what the creator ended up doing was combining some random languages to make
a form of common language to fill the gap left by the fact that we couldnt
possibly know what a common language would even sound like


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I'm pretty sure it's a mixture of multiple languages. The main one being
Urudu. "Croitzal ronzell gungnir" In Urudu translates roughly to Calamity,
Renaissance, and Guns. It makes the most sense out of anything else. Unless
they're actually using Dovahzul, Tengwar, D'ni, Atlantian, or some other
Tolkien-esque language that we're unaware of.


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So I doubt this will be helpful at all, but given the ties to the Tower of
Babel legend in the first season and the fact that the relics are supposedly
from this pre-Babel civilization in-lore. We _could_ arrive at the assumption
that the chants are words from multiple languages pulled together to create a
"harmony" that echoes the "Original Language" spoken by the relic's creators.
This is not a real-world, this is definitive answer, but just based on what I
know of series lore so far and the rather extensive response by Torisuda this
makes the most sense to me. Gibberish, but gibberish on purpose.


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This is avery interesting topic, and i bet it's a PUZZLE the anime's lore is
strongly related to the called "balal no noroi" or "the curse of balal/babel"
so maybe the chants are a lot of different languages, modern, ancient and
fictional, mixed together...

my educated guess for some, tron = forced activation, zizzl = natural
activation... the names of the relics and some words for what they think of
the relic...

for example, Maria says: seilen coffin = the coffin of Selena, the girl who
died using that relic Airgetlam = the name of the relic Tron = forced
activation of the relic made by the symphogear

the zesshou has that 'zizzl' word, which if i'm right, it's an activation
without technology... as in kanade's and maria's gungnir activation... so they
could be using fine's power to increase their own, or just the power of the
curse of babel...

certainly all of this discussion is a mystery, but i believe it will be
revealed in the anime at some point, since language and songs are very
relevant to the lore...

Edit: more than "natural activation" i think zizzl is "wrong activation" of
the symphogear, as if they are not supposed to use it, and they are not
supposed to use the zesshou....


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