Anquietas...

For anyone curious enough about the 'text' below, it's written in a fictional language called 'Anquietas' used by the Ancients -- a fictional race in the Stargate television series franchises.



This made-up language is used heavily (though not often accurately or even logically) in both the 'Stargate SG-1' and 'Stargate Atlantis' television series, but moreso for Atlantis. In fact, Stargate Atlantis is based/set in the lost city of the Ancients (i.e. Atlantis) so there are tons of these symbols scattered around the place.

The best thing about this so-called language (created by a graphics designer on the shows) is that it has a 1-to-1 correlation between the Ancient characters and the English characters of the alphabet (i.e. you don't need to translate the Ancient into an intermediate language and then interpret that into English.)

There are pages similar to this (a forum on Gateworld.net) that not only discuss this alphabet, but provide users the ability to download computer-installable fonts to replicate the symbols, and even provide 'practice phrases' to assist you in learning to 'translate' the characters (you will need to have the font installed to be able to see it on the above forum though, otherwise it just appears like normal English.)

Though of course it's very easy to 'cheat' by just copying and pasting the Ancient text into a text editor and changing the font to something different to provide the 'translation' automatically, it isn't that hard to 'learn' the symbols themselves. :) In fact, within 10 minutes I was able to translate whole phrases fairly easily (though a bit slowly -- not sure I'd ever read Ancient as fast as I do English...) The only real issue with the Ancient alphabet--as it currently is--is the fact that the 'F' and 'U' characters are identical, which leads to delays while you're trying to work out the word based on its neighbouring characters... :(

Apparently the graphics designer on Stargate Atlantis that was responsible for creating this alphabet stated that he had 'fixed' the problem earlier this year; it may take some time to actually determine, though, which character (U, F, or possibly both?) will be changed... once that happens, no doubt an updated font will be released. :)

Oh, in case anyone wants to 'verify' the above Ancient text--if you were translating it--or you just don't care either way (*grin*), then it's my blog's title (Infrequent) in the larger sized font, and the blog description (Random...pace) in the smaller sized font. :)

Cheers,
Pete.