Liyue Script from Genshin Impact
Original article (in Russian): https://vk.com/@randomkj-liyue-moji
Let’s try to dissect the made-up characters (‘Liyue characters’ or ‘Liyue script’) from the game Genshin Impact, and maybe even try reading them.
1. What is the Liyue Script
1.1. Definition of ‘Liyue Characters’
Before we can begin discussing this script, we first have to understand what it is in the first place. The Liyue characters are made-up symbols seemingly based on Chinese characters. They can be found:
On various signage in Liyue
In Beneath the Dragon-Queller
On the Sigil of Permission
We’ll mostly be talking about the first case here. Another thing to note is that we’re not gonna discuss the glyphs on Qiqi’s talisman or near the Mountain Shaper; they are protective talismans and have little to do with the script itself.
1.2. Locations of Liyue Characters
Teyvat has three fictional writing systems: Mondstadt script, Inazuman script and the Liyue script. The Liyue script is common in the state of Liyue. Thus, the name.
Since the first two scripts are regular alphabets, deciphering and reading them is trivial. The Liyue characters, however, are still undeciphered, and it’s not even clear whether they can be deciphered. This is what we’re going to discuss.
2. Graphical Form of Liyue Characters
2.1. Origins of Liyue Form
It’s common knowledge that the Liyue script was inspired by early Chinese writing, and more specifically by the ‘seal’ (篆書) forms going back to the Qin Empire (~3rd century BC). Today, you most often see them on seals.
The Chinese characters in the example above are deliberately stylised to fit the square shape of the seal. The developers probably based their fictional script on the ancient forms of Chinese characters because contemporary ones would’ve probably looked out of place in the fantasy world of the game.
Today, the main source for these forms is the dictionary ‘Shuowen Jiezi’ written in the 2nd century. It’s especially popular among people who don’t know much about the history of Chinese writing, but want to quickly find some stylish ancient characters for whatever purpose. Some characters from the Shuowen don’t actually correspond to any real historical Chinese forms. Regardless, the dictionary is so culturally ingrained, that it’s used pretty much by everyone.
2.2. Form Analysis
Even though the Liyue heavily resemble the seal style of Chinese characters, they don’t actually correspond to any real characters, with a few exceptions. I’ll give you a couple of examples of Liyue characters next to some similar Chinese ones. Some caveats: I’m not gonna write the words corresponding to the the characters (we’re only looking at the form) and I’m not gonna look at all the Liyue symbols here.
2.2.1. Glyphs Closely Resembling Real Seal Characters
As you can tell, these symbols resemble some real Chinese characters to a significant extent. But, for example, in the 邑-like character the elements are shuffled around and an additional stroke is added; the 共-like character got a nonexisting bottom element (probably by analogy with characters like 恭); the 樂-like character has a different bottom part; the 方-like one has an additional stroke; the 燕-like character lacks the inner element and the ones on the sides are slightly different; the 福-like character looks kinda like a blend between the seal form and the regular form.
2.2.2. Characters Shaped the Same (or Almost the Same) as Real Ones
I’ll add the last Chinese character as a bonus. It’s 10 centuries older than the seal form above it and is completely unrelated. The developers probably didn’t even know about it, but I’ll put it here anyway.
What conclusions can we draw from all this? We can divide the Liyue characters into two types: those that take some features from really existing characters, and those that are identical to really existing characters.
Something interesting to note is that incomplete reproduction of characters or the addition of superficial elements is something that the Mondstadt and Inazuman scripts do as well.
3. Deciphering Liyue Characters
3.1. Gathering Liyue Characters
There is limited number of these characters that can be found in Genshin Impact. The picture in the very beginning of the article had 26 of them.
Here I highlighted some characters from other materials that you can’t find on the first picture.
Entrance to Beneath the Dragon-Queller (2 new ones)
Serenitea Pot mission scroll (3 new ones)
Keqing idle animation (3)
Yanfei charged attack (1)
Flag near Qingce Village (1)
Inn roof in Liyue Harbor (1)
Banner near the Wanmin Restaurant (1)
This is 38 characters total + some stylistic variants. For convinience, let’s give them identifying numbers.
3.2. Possibility of Decipherment
Even though this script had been in the game since release, it still hasn’t been deciphered. Since there are more characters in it than in the Mondstadt and Inazuman scripts, it’s probably not an alphabet.
Let’s look at some Liyue signage.
We can see that the city uses a really limited range of characters (mostly 2, 11, 22, 23 and 24). The order in which they are arranged appears completely random. This would’ve looked pretty unnatural in any real writing system.
This is a bulletin board from Liyue. Here we see a bigger variation in the characters used, although if you look closely, the characters in the bottom right are exact copies of the columns on the note in the upper left, while the note in the upper right is an exact copy of the horizontal one in the upper left. This is pretty odd.
Some characters only appear in a single place. This is also pretty weird. See for example the glyphs from Yanfei’s attack (which is, in essense, a seal) and the character from the Wanmin (Wànmín-táng, ‘All-People Hall’ in Chinese):
As you can tell, in these two cases the characters weren’t actually picked at random. But the ones surrounding them were.
There are also cases where you can find Liyue characters just on their own, like near the Dragon-Queller.
There are many examples of these ‘independent’ characters throughout the game. Characters from the other scripts in the game don’t do that. That implies that they’re just used to convey an atmosphere, rather than to record language.
3.3. Conclusion
From the evidence we’ve gathered it is clear that there are too many unnatural things about these characters for them to be meaningful. In other words:
The Liyue script is made up of meaningless characters based on the seal style of Chinese writing and serves the purpose of conveying an Asian atmosphere.
That means no decipherment is possible here, because that would require a real system that records some language. Even the fact that the community couldn’t decipher this script after a while was already suspicious.
4. Other Liyue Glyphs
4.1. Dragon-Queller
The glyphs at the entrance show the elements that Azhdaha will absorb, which change every week. These characters are different from the ones above, because while they are also copied from Chinese seal characters, they are copied accurately and mean the same things as the original characters.
These characters were probably picked to convey to the players what elements they should expect. Pyro and Cryo just copy the seal forms of 火 ‘fire’ and 冰 ‘ice’ with no changes, Hydro is a slightly edited version of the seal form of 水 ‘water’ and Electro is a stylised seal form of 靁(雷) ‘thunder’.
4.2. Sigil of Permission
You can find some Liyue characters on the Sigil of Permission. Even though the upper part is too stylised and weird (like on the protective talismans), it’s pretty easy to identify the two characters inside of it.
The characters themselves are 通 ‘to go through’ and 非 ‘to not be’, but I don’t think they’re supposed to say anything coherent here.
Thanks!