Why does the Bionicle alphabet lack punctuation marks? They could just have gaps in between the letters for spaces. They don't have capitals either, so:
my friend went to po-wahi and all i got was this lousy rock
The only punctuation mark they seem to have is the hyphen, which is the same as in English and must be in some other languages. They could just make the letters larger than the rest for capitals, so:
my friend went to po-wahi and all i got was this lousy rock
It doesn't look right, but at least we're getting somewhere. My question is: Why do the Matoran have no other punctuation?
Full Version: You Ever Wondered Why?
perhaps lego didnt really intend to use the matoran language for long phrases or sentences. they really just wanted some fun little thing for people to be able to decode to get little secret messages like "beware the bohrok" or "the power lies beneath" tiny stuff like that. lego could have also just been like me and was lazy so they didnt see fit to use most forms of punctuation or capitalization.
You're right atraelthefallen,Lego like to give us something to be buzy even igf it isn't a Lego product.
It was used as code, so wouldn't Lego want us to have fun decoding it? And the harder to crack, the more fun it is. Unless it's really complicated. 
But what I wanted to say, is: punctuation marks and capitals would've made it easier to decode. Therefor, no punctuation marks.
But what I wanted to say, is: punctuation marks and capitals would've made it easier to decode. Therefor, no punctuation marks.
| QUOTE (Kahu Rider 13 @ Nov 26 2002, 04:27 PM) |
| Why does the Bionicle alphabet lack punctuation marks? They could just have gaps in between the letters for spaces. They don't have capitals either, so: my friend went to po-wahi and all i got was this lousy rock The only punctuation mark they seem to have is the hyphen, which is the same as in English and must be in some other languages. They could just make the letters larger than the rest for capitals, so: my friend went to po-wahi and all i got was this lousy rock It doesn't look right, but at least we're getting somewhere. My question is: Why do the Matoran have no other punctuation? |
I invented a language and the only punctuation in it is a period
. Why do they need any other punctuation?
| QUOTE (Schizo Kaita @ Nov 26 2002, 05:41 PM) |
| But what I wanted to say, is: punctuation marks and capitals would've made it easier to decode. Therefor, no punctuation marks. |
Perhaps that's true about the capitals, but not with the punctuation if the punctuation marks were just ordinary symbols like
. That's A in Matoran, and a question mark is probably ? where you live, __..__ or .._.. in Morse Code(I think the first one), so both are perfectly normal, so why can't punctuation marks be little designs in circles in Matoran? Then punctuation wouldn't make it easier to decode.
Maybe there is punctuation, and we just haven't revealed it yet. You never know 
Greg
Greg
| QUOTE (GregF @ Nov 26 2002, 06:52 PM) |
| Maybe there is punctuation, and we just haven't revealed it yet. You never know Greg |
Are you hinting to us Greg?
Will you tell us this for christmas?
I do not know. Lego was probably just lazy or wasn't thinking about it at the tiome.
K-9
K-9
Not every language uses punctuation and capitalization. You tend to see those two more often in the Romance languages, like English and French. They exist solely to satisfy some old grammar rule. I doubt there is punctuation and the like in the Bionicle language(Matoran?). Then again, we haven't seen long spiels written down, so you never know...
| QUOTE (GregF @ Nov 26 2002, 07:52 PM) |
| Maybe there is punctuation, and we just haven't revealed it yet. You never know Greg |
No offense, GregF, but that sounded like a lame excuse to me. Trying to get us off your back, eh?
And in case you're wondering: this is not meant as an insult. Everyone loves GregF.
I highly doubt that there is any real need for punctuation marks in the language of the Matoran. After all, from the examples that we've seen, it seems to be used for writing quick messages on rocks and trees rather long books. And after reading the comics and playing the MNOLG, I think that it's safe to say that the villages depend primarily on oral tradtion, rather than written language.
plus, whats the point of lego using puntuation marks and the like if we already know how to decode the language without them?
No, not a lame attempt to evade the question ... just stating that it is not something we have really considered (since, as someone pointed out, the language is used only for really short messages, hence no need for punctuation).
That does not mean that the person who invented the language did not invent punctuation to go with it, or that we might not choose to introduce punctuation in the future. There's a lot of story stuff and other things about BIONICLE that already exist here, which we just haven't released yet because it is not the right time in the story to do so. Not saying punctuation falls under that header -- but don't assume just because you haven't seen something yet, that that means it does not exist in some form somewhere.
Greg
... just stating that it is not something we have really considered (since, as someone pointed out, the language is used only for really short messages, hence no need for punctuation).That does not mean that the person who invented the language did not invent punctuation to go with it, or that we might not choose to introduce punctuation in the future. There's a lot of story stuff and other things about BIONICLE that already exist here, which we just haven't released yet because it is not the right time in the story to do so. Not saying punctuation falls under that header -- but don't assume just because you haven't seen something yet, that that means it does not exist in some form somewhere.
Greg
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