Sometimes you’re in a relationship with someone. Sometimes that someone decides to give you a note written in cryptic dragon runes from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. If that happens you should probably get to translating that note as soon as possible.
Over the weekend, a person who goes by byeblee posted such a note on the Skyrim subreddit hoping people there might be able to help him do just that. “Ex-girlfriend left me this before we broke up, I don’t play Skyrim,” the post said.
“But I think you guys can help can anyone translate it for me? Probably to see what she wants to say before leaving. There’s a second page if anyone’s interested.”
Skyrim has a made-up language used by its dragons called (surprise) the Dragonish. There are 34 symbols in it, 25 of which map directly onto the English alphabet (dragons have no use for the letter “c” it turns out).
The extra symbols in the dragon alphabet represent pairs of letters like “ey” or “ur.” In theory then, translating something from Dragonish should be pretty straightforward.
Byeblee’s note from 2015 had an extra wrinkle to it, however. The original text was written in Filipino and then translated into Dragonish. Plus, according to the people in the thread who attempted the translation, it probably wasn’t even native Filipino, but most likely English that was turned into Filipino using Google Translate and then into Dragonish.
One commenter offered up the translated excerpts like the following:
“At this moment, I’m doing research, then I checked the phone. I looked at my inbox and there was nothing good and you’d ignored most of my texts 7:25 pm is when I’m writing this and as such I know that your class is over but I don’t know what you’re doing anymore you no longer tell me anymore perhaps you’d like to tell me”
This prompted byeblee to explain that he was under a lot of stress with family issues at the time which put strain on the relationship. “Honestly, I don’t want to translate more of this letter,” another commenter concluded after that. “It’s not a sweet ode to Skyrim. It’s just detailing a train wreck relationship…”
In an email byeblee said he didn’t know his girlfriend at the time to be much of a Skyrim fan and didn’t think much of it,
“I asked her what it was or what’s written there but she didn’t tell me, all she told me was it was for me to figure out. But back then I was dealing with a lot of problems as well so I never really had the time to.
The letter got shelved, rather placed in a clear book that I keep. And that clear book got shelved for a very long while. I was just cleaning my room yesterday when I scoured through it. And decided to ask Reddit for help.”
The moral of this story? Don’t sleep on getting those weird Dragonish notes from loved ones translated (and also maybe try to talk openly about your feelings rather than coding them in the made-up language of a video game).
“Probably this was an early warning sign for a breakup that I could’ve fixed if I understood what she was trying to convey,” byeblee said. “However I didn’t so we broke up anyway.”
Comments
18 responses to “Guy Finally Tries To Decode Skyrim Note Two Years Too Late”
If the problems of your relationship are being communicated in a language purposefully used so that you can’t understand what they’re trying to communicate, it’s probably too late for the relationship even if you do translate it in time
It’s really sad. I get it, though… If your communication isn’t great with the languages we have, who can blame someone for trying other languages they think their partner might prefer?
If you can’t engage someone with a simple entreaty to talk because of the way other attempts have played out in the past, it’s understandable to frame it in other ways – like a puzzle – that they might be more interested in engaging with.
Clearly this guy wasn’t, and didn’t.
Personally I think there are pretty severe communication problems both ways in a relationship if someon feels the best way to try and broach the fact is to take something, google translate it into another language, and then into a made up computer game language from there. Top it off with “you work it out”, and that’s pretty childish.
I don’t think her ex-partner found Dragonish from Skyrim easier to understand.
It seems very generalised here. I don’t know if I agree or disagree. Each situation is different and each person is different. I would have spent many sleepless nights trying to figure it out but that being said from 99% of the people I know doing research they pretty much don’t even have time to eat… Geez let’s not get into psychological issues potentially playing a role here too (maybe and maybe not)…
It’s less about whether the recipient would spend the time to translate it, and more, about the fact that the communication degraded to that point in the first place. A healthy relationship requires a good line of communication. Wrapping big problems of your relationship in to a puzzle rather than sitting down and discussing them means that you don’t have that communication. Maybe the person writing it didn’t try to communicate clearly in the first place, or maybe they tried but went unheard.
Either way, purposefully trying to obfuscate your communication in hopes that the other person will take the time to decipher it means that your communication as a couple is gone. And without communication, your relationship is most likely doomed no matter what.
To be honest, if my girlfriend gave me a cryptic note knowing full well that I wouldn’t understand it, in the last days of our relationship, I would say good riddance. That’s no way to maturely deal with your problems.
I wouldn’t pretend to know the intimacy of the relationship, but I do know that it can be daunting to express your feelings openly. Instead of speaking them face to face putting your thoughts down on paper is an easier way to express yourself without having the immediate reaction and possible retaliation from a one on one encounter. This I would describe as the next step past written communication where the text is in a foreign language that only the author immediately understands. As convoluted as it might be it is still a step in the right direction with attempting to open a dialogue that might not have been there before.
Is Dragonish even a “real” language? Or is it just a cipher, like the Al Bhed language from Final Fantasy X?
The extra symbols in the dragon alphabet represent pairs of letters like “ey” or “ur.” In theory then, translating something from Dragonish should be pretty straightforward.
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