Now rushing to finish before Capcom releases Monster Hunter Wilds, one hunter has spent 5 years and over 2,000 hours decoding the series' "Monster Hunter language"
Oct. 4, 2024Capcom’s language is “impossible” to reverse-engineer, but a lexicon was doable
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Something from nothing
This isn’t a mechanically complete reverse-engineering of MHL, Moofah tells me over Discord. “Truly reverse-engineering the language is impossible” due to the way Capcom has created it, so the goal is “to do my best to recreate something as close as possible to the real thing.”
“This includes but is not limited to a full grammatical structure directly recreated from how it seems to be formed in the game’s version of the language and a 400+ word lexicon with most words directly translated from their use in the game,” they explain. They don’t have a finished written version of the language since “we only have a little to go off of writing-wise,” but the work that’s gone into the spoken language is staggering.
“Right now I am trying to finish the lexicon to try to get around 450-ish words before taking a month to just write up the second half of the language teaching PDF,” they explain. “Once the PDF is out, I plan to release language teaching videos onYouTubeto both add vocal context to pronunciation (though there are pronunciation guides in the PDF next to every new word) and have a digestible form of learning if people don’t like reading.”
Moofah has now boiled MHL down to five major languages that exist alongside a few trace dialects and the more fringe language used by the elder Wyverians. Those are, in their words:
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For a modern example, Moofah tells me that “Monster Hunter Wilds de garegare dute husoti gire” translates pretty cleanly to “It feels like we’ve been waiting for Monster Hunter Wilds for years.” Meanwhile, “Ruku soshi de Monster Hunter maiera?” would mean “Which village in Monster Hunter do you like?” In-game, you’ll often hear “Teruufu” as a greeting in the tutorial. “If you practice, you’ll become a skillful hunter” would be “Sura ti ebeku, kinata ra suto ridagire.” It really is a workable language.
To untangle these Christmas lights as best as they could, Moofah started by recording Monster Hunter cutscenestwice- once in MHL and once in Japanese - leading to over 45GB of audio recordings just from Rise and Sunbreak.
“I have likely invested around 2,000+ hours of my time on it,” Moofah says, and that number is “quickly rising as I’ve put my nose to the proverbial grindstone this year to finish it prior to Monster Hunter Wilds releasing.”
Given their background, I couldn’t help but ask their opinion on the surprising decision to makethe Palico cat companions in Monster Hunter Wilds speak in human tonguesafter 20 years of meowing.
“Palico as well as all Felynes have always had dialogue boxes for speech and only in World did they make the choice to keep them from speaking,” Moofah said. “I think they are very cute and it’s lovely to see them vocalizing their thoughts and feelings.”
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