Ar Ciela

The Ar Ciela Language (アル・シエラ言語) is the language commonly known as the "Language of the Planet," and it is not a language used by the humans. This language is used when the Planet Ar Ciel wants to express her will and intention, and also when the Planet wants to craft something (comparable to Earth's activities ranging from weather to volcanic eruption to the cycle of life). In such situations, Ar Ciela is used to materialize those wishes of the Planet. You can also say that Ar Ciela is the origin of everything that belongs to the Planet Ar Ciel, and was also the initial point for the development of the Carmena Foreluna language, which in turn also served as a predecessor for Hymmnos.

Ar Ciela has a really special trait, that is, its meanings cannot be completely understood within just the audible spectrum. That is because, the pronunciation of the language itself becomes H-Waves and takes effect in that very form. Human's normal audible range is within 20~20000Hz, but Ar Ciela's pronunciation can easily reach up to 20~600000Hz (30 times higher than the audible spectrum) of H-wave. With such an extensive range like this, necessary sampling rate for recording Ar Ciela would be 1200kHz (in comparison, CD uses 44.1kHz sampling rate).

So what will happen when normal humans listen to Ar Ciela? There is one method through that can be used to experience ourselves. First, let's try recording ourselves speaking or singing into then computer, then use an audio editor program to cut off all the sound waves that are over 100Hz in frequency. The result will be a big mess of muddy and stuffy voice which is difficult to understand. That is the same effect as when a normal person listens to Ar Ciela.

For example, if we try recording ourselves saying the word okaasan ("mother") into our computer and cut off the sound waves that are over 100Hz, the word will sound like "ohoohon." Now, we can still tell a few things from this albeit highly distorted word: it has five morae, accent falls onto the 2nd and 3rd morae, and we can also feel where the vowels are. As such, even though in reality that word might even sound similar to something random like "notaahau" (which has no meaning at all), our brains will automatically come to realize that this word is okaasan. However, with Ar Ciela - a completely strange language, we cannot "guess" like in Japanese. For example, take the word Tisia. It's the result of the "cutoff" process mentioned above, and as you can see, there are countless ways to infer the original pronunciation of that word. But certainly, if we could somehow magically become capable of listening to sounds all the way up to 600kHz, we would be able to realize the original and precise pronunciation of that word, and understand its meaning.

Another example. The Japanese are often known for not being able to tell the difference between /r/ and /l/, so without proper training, Japanese people will have difficulty distinguishing the two English words grass and glass - they both sound "garasu" to them.

As such, when a normal person listens to Ar Ciela, in order for them to be able to recognize the words' true meaning, Ar Ciela has been divided into categories. Furthermore, those categories are also split into dimensional visual subdivisions - that is, subcategories that attempt to visualize Ar Ciela pronunciation in dimensional forms.

Due to these special traits (detailed below, in the Dialects section), Ar Ciela has two methods in which it can be written, both of which use the Ar Ciela writing system:

Ar Ciela Public
"Public" here represents the fact that texts written in this method represents only the sounds within the audible spectrum of the humans, and thus only uses 26 letters. To normal people, there is no way to understand those words as there is no additional information needed for deciphering due to this method of writing only recording what the humans can hear, not the true meanings of the language. This was the method used for writing the lyrics in the Hymmnos Concert CDs' booklets.

Ar Ciela Compartment
Basically, Ar Ciela Compartment is fairly similar to Ar Ciela Public, but it features additional diacritics, named Compartment Codes. Those Compartment Codes explicitly represent the conditions of the sounds which belong to the frequency range inaudible to humans.

Humans cannot write down the Compartment Codes as they are uncapable of hearing them. Furthermore, normal humans can also hardly understand the meanings behind those Compartment Codes and cannot make one-to-one correspondences between the written and spoken language. However, for the purpose of scientific analysis, Ar Ciela Compartment is the standard and necessary method of writing the language.

As explained above, Compartment Codes are diacritics that are further added to normal Ar Ciela texts. They are used to represent Ar Ciela's 5 frequency tendencies and 4 amplitude tendencies. It's through those Compartment Codes that the basics of Ar Ciela words are revealed - think of them as the radicals in kanji characters.

Sound frequencies from 20000Hz to 600000Hz is broken into five parts, called sessions. For example, if we hear a 100kHz sound that sounds like "a," it could actually be "ka" or "sa" or something else, but our ears cannot distinguish those high frequency sounds.

FMCL
Compartment Codes that represent frequency sessions are called FMCLs.

The five FMCLs are:

AMCL
The other type of Compartment Codes, AMCL, represents the amplitude tendencies - in other words, the shape of the sound wave above 20000Hz. Those amplitudes are vital to recognizing sound pressure made by pronunciation of words, which is necessary for realizing those words. For example, between "ka" and "sa," the former has a shorter and more focused sound, leading to a sharper amplitude than the latter, which is softer and has a more flat sound pressure.

The four AMCL are: Normally, FMCL are written above the letter, while AMCL are written under them. However, those Compartment Codes are never used with vowels. That is because it is still possible to distinguish vowels even at high frequencies, and the confusion is only caused by the large variety of consonants that become unrecognizable.

Differences Between both Writing Systems
Let's show the differences between both Ar Ciela Public and Ar Ciela Compartment by showing how the words Ec Tisia are written in both ways:



In here, you can see how it looks written in Ar Ciela Public. As you can see, it is written normally like many other languages that use alphabets - including Hymmnos. However, it is still yet impossible to recognize the meaning of this word.



While in the other hand, here is the same phrase written in Ar Ciela Compartment. It becomes Ec[s-4/half] T[s-3/quad]is[s-4/dual]ia (you can get this by typing E%)c $&Ti%(sia on your keyboard, using the official Ar Ciela Compartment font).

Now, using the corresponding table below, we can finally decipher the meaning of the word by breaking it down into letters: "Sympathy + Growth" and "People + Sincerity + Forgiveness + Hope + Power of Emotion" respectively.

Meanings of the SoundsEdit
Ar Ciela is the origin of Carmena Foreluna, thus, the pronunciation of each letter represents a different emotional state (which is converted into H-waves). While sharing similar "randomness" feature with Carmena Foreluna (which means we can freely recognize and translate the letters however you want), once the letters are fused into words, they form a solid meaning. Take Ec Tisia for example. As we can see above, its meaning is really random: "Sympathy + Growth" and "People + Sincerity + Forgiveness + Hope + Power of Emotion." However, once converted into H-waves, the feelings merge together and, as a result, Ec Tisia as a whole means "Forgive everything." That said, the meanings of words are not limited to just a mix of each separate letter's meaning. It was through a long process of mixing, adding and alternating countless emotions that Ar Ciela came to the language of today which we call Hymmnos.

Below is a chart that summarizes all the known emotions in each separate letter till now. Vowels are not divided according to their frequency, because they require the addition of consonants in order to acquire meaning. Speaking in Wave Science terms, vowels are not classified - they remain the same regardless of Compartment. To the humans, the meaning of each vowel might sound varied and only loosely connected, but as for the Planet, she feels that those are one and only unified emotion. Those unified emotions are surrounded by [brackets] in order to distinguish them from humans' derived meanings. That said, it is not possible for a human to alter the words as they please. Words in Ar Ciela are crafted by the Planet herself, and is a synthesized form of emotion, so if you for example replace "A" with "U" or "N" then the meaning of the word will be altered, and it will no longer be Ar Ciela anymore. It is assured that the emotions of vowels and consonants cannot be expressed by words. Only the known emotions are written in the above table, according to research materials from the Archia Think Tank. Furthermore, their divisions into I to IX are purely for the purpose of researching, they have absolutely no meaning to the actual Ar Ciela language. So, say, if you divide a section - III for example - into 10 smaller subsections, the "feeling" will be divided even further and become much more detailed, bringing forth many more new emotions.