In the first half of the first episode of Hataraku Maou-sama, we can hear conversation between Satan and Alsiel in "Underworld" language. Is the "Underworld" language based on a real language, or is it just plain gibberish?
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sounds french to me, but that's just me. it's the sound of japanese actors trying to sound french as much like them trying to sound english. just a wild guess (that's why its just a comment) :P – corroded May 02 '13 at 12:26
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According to this article (which cites from a 2ch thread), the language is is pretty simple:
The Entean language is basically letter substituted English, with vowel keeping their original position, while the consonants are reversed, so B=Z, C=Y, D=X, ... and vice versa.
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ -> AZYXEWVTISRLPNOMQKJHUGFDCBFor example:
- 人間 human → tupan
- 世界 world → foklx
- 魔王（芦屋による呼称） majesty → pasejhc
They say it with such enthusiasm, too:
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NICE! It fits perfectly at around 5 minutes in episode 1, where Satan and Alsiel just arrived at human world: `Do you want to die?` --> `Xo cou fanh ho xie?` and `Calm down` --> `Yalp xofn` – nhahtdh May 06 '13 at 18:17
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@corroded: There is no need for me to accept it right off the bat. It is correct answer, but I'll leave it here for a while to see if anyone wants to expand on it. – nhahtdh May 07 '13 at 04:40
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Based on this thread from MAL:
It seems that it IS gibberish. They just jumbled a lot of languages together (English, French and German to name a few).
Here are some quotes from the thread (I am still not sure if they can be counted on as being 'facts'):
The way they threw random words of other actual languages into their made up language was very funny, especially if you understand Japanese (how foreign words are transliterated/pronounced in a syllabary language). - Usuzumiiro (1)
I kept trying to figure out what language they were speaking only to learn it was made up maouspeak... sneaky anime. - AOMINE (2)
I tracked these down by just going to page 1 of that thread then searching for the word "language". It seems the general consensus is it is gibberish and that it is a mixture of words. Still looking for the actual source for them all to say that though. (I am thinking it is on 4chan)
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3Can you quote some here? The thread is very long, and it doesn't just discuss about the language. – nhahtdh May 02 '13 at 13:17
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1One interesting thing is that they do make sure names (Orba, Emilia) and Satan are familiar. And the phrase equivalent to "My lord" (used by Alsiel to refer to Maou) sounds the same in the cases they are used. – nhahtdh May 04 '13 at 04:22