Ba-Ado-Mishram Illustration Translation

[Mojonero]

Leaving this topic hoping someone with the dedication wanders in and solves this little riddle.

I managed to find a transcription for all the letters in the BAM in-world illustration, I'm fairly confident this is correct because the text is repeated four times, so there is at least four different instances of every character which can be used to disambiguate hard to tell examples.

But, I cannot find any meaning interpretation of the letters. I imagine this is using phonetic interpretations of the letters, and it seems to lack any vowels, except perhaps Y.


All in all the four repeats are these, starting at the top-left, going clockwise. Marking within [] characters that I think are meant to be ignored
 

T H CH L Y F L TH H T N Y M S Y
[?] 
Y S M Y N T H TH L F Y L CH H T
[D?] 
T H CH L Y F L TH H T N Y M S Y 
[D? D?]
Y S M Y N T H TH L F Y L CH H T
[Y?]

No clue on this at all. Before I got the key mapping into its current state I had 'G' instead of 'TH', so the at the begining I had something like
 

T H CH L Y F L G H ...
T(o) H-CH(hate) L-Y-F-L-G-H(Lifelight) ...

But I am no longer sold on that key, and I'm not sure my guess was any correct. I am not even sure my first line is actually the first or if we are meant to start at the bottom-right (so 'Y S M Y N T ...').

I'm very curious to see what this could mean. What are your guesses?

[Argenti he/him]

On 12/7/2024 at 8:35 AM, Mojonero said:

Leaving this topic hoping someone with the dedication wanders in and solves this little riddle.

I managed to find a transcription for all the letters in the BAM in-world illustration, I'm fairly confident this is correct because the text is repeated four times, so there is at least four different instances of every character which can be used to disambiguate hard to tell examples.

But, I cannot find any meaning interpretation of the letters. I imagine this is using phonetic interpretations of the letters, and it seems to lack any vowels, except perhaps Y.


All in all the four repeats are these, starting at the top-left, going clockwise. Marking within [] characters that I think are meant to be ignored
 

T H CH L Y F L TH H T N Y M S Y
[?] 
Y S M Y N T H TH L F Y L CH H T
[D?] 
T H CH L Y F L TH H T N Y M S Y 
[D? D?]
Y S M Y N T H TH L F Y L CH H T
[Y?]

No clue on this at all. Before I got the key mapping into its current state I had 'G' instead of 'TH', so the at the begining I had something like
 

T H CH L Y F L G H ...
T(o) H-CH(hate) L-Y-F-L-G-H(Lifelight) ...

But I am no longer sold on that key, and I'm not sure my guess was any correct. I am not even sure my first line is actually the first or if we are meant to start at the bottom-right (so 'Y S M Y N T ...').

I'm very curious to see what this could mean. What are your guesses?

I have absolutely no idea! I am very impressed by anything you drew out of this. For me it's just scribbles.

But I will say, every other translation was Not in English. The stormlight one, for example, said "tavodovast" which mean's Tavast's light. So it's possible that it means something very cool in Alethi, but is nonsense in english.

[Mojonero]

You are right that they could be in a in-world language, though I remain hopeful. In the case you mention it was the phonemes for a glyph, which are also meant to be hard to read.

I cannot find it right now, but I was inspired because of a similar work done on the Oathbringer llustration of Sja-anat, which contains a similar message written in the Thaylen script, without vowels, and which is obfuscated English. See this message.

I just looked now and the author of both pieces is Miranda Meeks, so I am reasonably confident this is another iteration of the same puzzle.

[Argenti he/him]

So I just looked at your Translation, and I changed some of the Glyphs. This is specficlly the top line: I think the others might be different 
 

T  H  CH  L  D/Y  F  L  K   H  SH  N  Y  M  S  H (Mine)

T  H  CH  L    Y    F  L  TH  H   T   N  Y  M  S  Y (Mojonero)

*The L looks funny, with an extra stroke, but it's the closet. 

 

Our first area of disagreement is the TH/K, which I like to read as a 2 with a stroke from the bottom. Notably, it curves very slightly away from the left.  K is a bit more spiky on the right, but that's easy enough to ignore.  

 

 

Next is the SH/T, which I think looks more like a SH, due to the curve on top, being upwards rather down downwards.

 

The last are the Ys, which are so weird.  The first doesn't really look like a Y or a D, but those are the closet ones. The last Y, however, looks more like an H. Compaing these two, they're almost identical, otther than a curve on the right.

T H(E)  CH(I)LD  (O)F L(UC)K   H(E)  SH(I)N Y  M(OA)SH

Is my best Guess, The Child of luck Makes sense, but nothing else does.

Edited December 9, 2024 by Argenti

[Mojonero]

Quote

This was also my initial guess before I worked out the repetition/symmetry scheme. My final reading is banking on all of the four repeats being made up the same letters, thus getting some redudancy which makes guessing letters easier since you have at least four instances of each.
The letter for this spot appears four times, and all four instances look like this:

Notice how while in the first one the bottom does curve sightly to the left as you note, each subsequential instance curves less or nothing at all in the next cases. The rest of the instances look less like 'K', which seems to have a pronounced 'break' in the middle in both the Calligraphic and Hybrid phoneme keys. I think these are more likely to be a callipraphic 'TH', with the identifying parts being a center bend to the left (where green/purple meets), with two bending arms to the sides (cyan and red), with curly bits being mostly insignificant to the shape:

 

Same goes for the SH/T. 'SH' was my initial guess, but the symmetry forces you to make a hard decision: if the text is the same in all the four repetitions, then this symbol must be the same letter.

There's only two (center and bottom) that look like nice calligraphic T, all other look like either 'TH' or perhaps calligraphic 'O'. But thosw two center elements don't look nothing like either, so they must all be poorly drawn 'TH's. Unless I make a mistake when matching symbols (which could happen, I have not revised that part yet), these should be all the same letter in any case.

Same rules apply for your the last case - there is a pair of 'Y's that look don't have the curly loop-in at the bottom/right end of the stroke. But by symmetry these are all the same letter, and it's not hard to accept that the curly bit gets "trailed off" to the right towards the next letter:

By contrast, these are all the 'H's:

Then there is a different issue: there is a phoneme for 'TH', but there is also a combo of 'T' followed by 'H'. The existance of 'TH' should mean the the word 'the' appears as 'TH', while 'T'+'H' should belong to different words, or be phonetic representations of different sounds (f.e. 'T' could be a 'D', cause, and 'H' could be any aspirated sound?).

This is using an outdated key, but I believe the character groups are correct, perhaps this is useful to anyone trying to find alternative mappings

Edited December 9, 2024 by Mojonero
wrong image

[teknopathetic he/him]

I wonder if it is semetic-like language in that it doesn't write down any of the vowels.

Or perhaps they are more like cords? Maybe it is a way of writing down rhythms? 

 

Edited December 10, 2024 by teknopathetic

[Argenti he/him]

On 12/7/2024 at 8:35 AM, Mojonero said:

Leaving this topic hoping someone with the dedication wanders in and solves this little riddle.

I managed to find a transcription for all the letters in the BAM in-world illustration, I'm fairly confident this is correct because the text is repeated four times, so there is at least four different instances of every character which can be used to disambiguate hard to tell examples.

But, I cannot find any meaning interpretation of the letters. I imagine this is using phonetic interpretations of the letters, and it seems to lack any vowels, except perhaps Y.


All in all the four repeats are these, starting at the top-left, going clockwise. Marking within [] characters that I think are meant to be ignored
 

T H CH L Y F L TH H T N Y M S Y
[?] 
Y S M Y N T H TH L F Y L CH H T
[D?] 
T H CH L Y F L TH H T N Y M S Y 
[D? D?]
Y S M Y N T H TH L F Y L CH H T
[Y?]

No clue on this at all. Before I got the key mapping into its current state I had 'G' instead of 'TH', so the at the begining I had something like
 

T H CH L Y F L G H ...
T(o) H-CH(hate) L-Y-F-L-G-H(Lifelight) ...

But I am no longer sold on that key, and I'm not sure my guess was any correct. I am not even sure my first line is actually the first or if we are meant to start at the bottom-right (so 'Y S M Y N T ...').

I'm very curious to see what this could mean. What are your guesses?

Would you post the plain page without adornment? I realized the L-y and L-TH are one stroke and I'm curious if that has any implications. Maybe they're smashing together the sound? Or trying to mimick something that's not in Alethi? Like a true J sound? 

[Mojonero]

Good idea, those pairs of letters were though to distinguish because they were merged into one stroke, once I separated them I didn't pay any attention into the fact they were paired up, but maybe that's a clue for something.

[Argenti he/him]

4 hours ago, Mojonero said:

Good idea, those pairs of letters were though to distinguish because they were merged into one stroke, once I separated them I didn't pay any attention into the fact they were paired up, but maybe that's a clue for something.

I also think it might be possible not  all sides are the same, they just kind of... Rhyme? Since we can't just pretend two letters that are similar, but not the same are identical.

 
ba-ado-mishram

6a-Qd0-NNLsraw

It's worth considering at least. 

On 12/9/2024 at 9:34 PM, teknopathetic said:

I wonder if it is semetic-like language in that it doesn't write down any of the vowels.

Or perhaps they are more like cords? Maybe it is a way of writing down rhythms? 

 

The former makes sense yea. If the latter is true... I have no idea

For all we know, that combo glyph might be an S, a K, and an E!

 

[jamskinner]

Is it coincidence that the end looks like wymsy. Not exactly but close. 

Edited December 12, 2024 by jamskinner

[Argenti he/him]

7 hours ago, jamskinner said:

Is it coincidence that the end looks like wymsy. Not exactly but close. 

What  do you mean? Whimsy? 

[jamskinner]

1 hour ago, Argenti said:

What  do you mean? Whimsy? 

Look at the ending of the line. It almost spells it using a y. Seems strange to be that close to an uncommon word.

[Mojonero]

The Taker of Secrets illustration seems to just repeat a couple of phrases, "it spies", "corrupted spren", etc.
My hope is that similarly this one says something we can expect about Mishram. So, Odium, Voidlight, Commander, Forms of Power, Singer, Roshar, Rival... but I can see none of in my transcription. The redundancy in the letters gives hope that the key is okey, even taking into account the combined strokes in the top/bottom, as the sides contain the same letters but split.

I assume the letters used are more similar sounds that each letter suggests. In the Taker of Secrets image, the proposed translation of "KRRF" is KoRRuF (Corrupt). I can only guess the translation makes use of this kind of transliteration. A native English speaker might see these phonetic puzzles easier than I do, because I haven't found any that make sense.