“I think this character represents a melting snowman reaching out with both arms to plead for help! So maybe this word means ‘help,’ or perhaps ‘ask for help.’ How about that?”
“Uh, are you sure?” Sabo asked, peering at the slab. “It looks to me more like a duck that got its head stuck in a hole and is kicking its legs.”
“I thought it was an image of a bald mountaintop with two dead trees on the sides,” Hack interjected.
Just for good measure, Robin added, “It looks like Chopper’s hat to me.” This last comment was too much for Koala, who groaned despairingly. Even this one character, the only one she’d felt confident about, was totally ambiguous.
She hung her head and slumped over the desk. “Ugh. I’m not getting anywhere. And I’m so curious about what it says!”
“Oh, if you just want to know what it says, I can tell you that right now,” Robin offered.
Koala smacked her hands on the desk and bolted upright. “You can read this?!”
“Didn’t you just say it was the first time you’d seen this writing?” Hack asked suspiciously.
“It is. But I know a number of ancient writing systems that are quite similar. I have a guess as to how the grammar works, so I think I can figure it out by instinct.”
By instinct? The other three looked at each other, incredulous. How was it possible to read an ancient script you’d never seen before by instinct? Even knowing the fact that Robin was a supremely talented archaeologist, it seemed improbable.
“Wait, there are similar writing systems?” Koala asked, suddenly alert.
“Yes,” Robin replied. “I think they likely belong to the same language cluster. If you want me to read it, I can do that right now. Shall I?”
She looked meaningfully at Koala, who abruptly shouted, “No! Not yet. I want to see how far I can get on my own.”
Robin had had a feeling she’d say that.
“In that case, may I give you just one hint?”
Sabo, Hack, and Koala all said “Hint?” as one.
“These letters aren’t pictographs. They’re phonetic.”
Human writing systems generally fall into two categories: letters that indicate meaning, and letters that indicate only sound. The characters used in the land of Wano are an elegant type of calligraphic pictograph, in which each unique character takes the form of the thing it represents. For example, the character for “river” is three vertical lines that represent flowing water, and the character for “mountain” is steepled in the middle like a mountain.
Meanwhile, the letters of the Roman alphabet hold no intrinsic meaning. A, B, and C represent sounds used in speech, and for this reason, they are simply phonetic in nature.
It was hard to blame Koala for thinking that the Eucaly script was pictographic. At first glance, the characters seemed like they had been scribbled by a child attempting to depict some real object they were looking at. But ultimately, it was just a coincidence that they looked like images.
“Eucaly’s script only represents sound,” explained Robin, “So trying to guess its meaning based on how it looks will take you off track.”
“Is there a shortcut, then?” Hack asked. Robin lifted a hand to her chin to consider.
“Good question. There are a variety of methods. For example, groups of words that are grammatically modified in the same way are likely to have the same vowel sound, or a similar pronunciation, prior to the modification of the word, so from there it helps to group the characters that are likely to be similar in sound and fill a grid with both vowels and consonants. What do you say to that?”
What could they say?
“I haven’t the slightest idea what you are talking about,” Hack admitted.
“In short,” Robin said, “I’m describing a method of determining the sound of each letter, one by one. If you have a sample of about a thousand patterns, you can often confirm at least one vowel.”
“A thousand samples for just one?” Sabo asked, sounding exhausted.
“It seems endless,” Hack grumbled.
“Yes,” Robin affirmed. “It’s a very tedious process.”
“So then it’s definitely not happening by tomorrow,” said Koala, looking as disappointed as a squirrel who’d forgotten where it had buried its acorns. If it required comparing a thousand pieces of text to identify a single vowel, it would be impossible to decipher the message in a single day.
“Yes, that’s right—if it were completely distinct from any other language, that is,” Robin said cryptically.
Koala looked up, startled.
“The Eucaly civilization flourished just a few centuries ago. That’s not enough time for the language to have become completely isolated. Also, if they were part of the World Government, they would have had some interaction with neighboring countries. It’s very likely that a similar language has lasted to the present day.”
“Um, so that means,” Koala muttered, trying to follow what Robin was saying, “if we look for a writing system that’s similar to this, and is better understood…”
“It should be easy to figure out. And as I said, I know of some systems that are similar to this one.”
“Oh, I get it!” Koala said, breathing a sigh of relief. She looked at the stacks of books in the cargo hold. “And I guess some similar languages have already been deciphered, huh? Somehow I missed that, even after all the history books I looked through. I wonder why.”
“Well, the reason is quite simple.”
Robin’s arm grew up out of the desk so that her slender fingers could grab the corner of the clay tablet. With a heavy thunk, she turned it ninety degrees.
“You have it facing the wrong direction.”
“Whaaaaaat?!”