#i prefer the ph and bh to f and v but i thought it would cause unnecessary confusion in this post

[novustrad]

I don't check the Warframe site very often, but I'm so glad I did because I love language puzzles like this.

The point is to figure out the password.

We start with a post-it: The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

And a short message.

I needed a little extra help from a reddit post that has this helpful key.

So this language (I think I remember someone saying it was Alternative or Low Orokin or something?) seems to be phonetically spelt. For example, "th" is different in "the" (dhuhh) and "Arthur" (Ar(th)uhr). The consonant that occurs twice in "quick" doesn't make sense to be "q", the image from Reddit translates it as "k".

Personally, for consistency, I think "f" should be "ph". Maybe "v" as "bh"? I'll use "f" and "v" for the direct translation here.

Consonants are the larger letters, vowels are the smaller ones above them. So far as I can tell, when paired together, vowels go before the consonant. Vowels on their own are paired with a "h".

Spoilers and answers incoming. If you want to figure all this out yourself, don't go any further. If you want the password, scroll all the way to the bottom.

...

The post-it, when translated with help of the phonetic key reads:

Dhuhh kooihk brown fawks juhmps ovehr dhuhh laezeeh dog.

The message as written reads:

Arthehr, for sols saek lern howh tooh pawrk eeor gawdam bayehk.

Ihf ayeh fayehnd iht ihn mayeh spawt uhgehn, Ihm kihkihng iht ovehr.

Ooidh luhv,

Koohihnseeh

P.S. Ihm spozed tooh ihnvayeht eehooh tooh dhuhh nooh eeihrz bash.

Kuhnsihdehr dhihs dhuhh ihnvayeht.

Arthur, for sols sake learn how to park your goddamn bike.

If I find it in my spot again, I'm kicking it over.

With love,

Quincy

P.S. I'm 'sposed to invite you to the New Year's bash.

Consider this that invite.

Honestly, it wasn't very clear to me what the password is. If you got it on your own, you're cleverer than me. If you didn't, the password is:

...

...

happynewyear

[languagesofgalhaf]

There’s still a few orthographic issues I haven’t settled on yet.

There’s a phonemic contrast between /fʲ/ and /ɸ/, likewise between /vʲ/ and /β/.  I use f and v for /fʲ/ and /vʲ/.  I’d been using ph and bh for /ɸ/ and /β/, but I don’t really like the look of those.  And I’m especially unsure how to indicate the geminates of both of those, do I use phh and bhh or pph and bbh?  Both look kinda ugly to me.

I’d thought about possibly using fh and vh for those two, but I’m not yet sure about that.  Another possibility is wh and w.  That might work especially well, since [w] is an allophone of /β/.  But then the geminate forms would have to be wwh and ww, which look really awkward.

Of course, a third possibility would be to use f and v for /ɸ/ and /β/ and something like fy and vy for /fʲ/ and /vʲ/, but A) /fʲ/ and /vʲ/ are much more common than /ɸ/ and /β/, and I’d prefer to keep the simpler romanization for the more common phonemes, and B) I’d have to respell the language’s name

I’m also iffy about how to write the rare /xː/ and /ɣː/.  The non-geminate forms are written kh and gh.  Should I write kkh and ggh?  Fortunately, those are hardly ever geminated