Phyrexian (language)



The Phyrexian language is a complete written, and spoken language, constructed and developed for Scars of Mirrodin block. It uses a novel alphabet, with primary glyphs attached to a central line that runs continuously to the end of a sentence, save for line breaks. Both the beginning and end of sentences are explicitly marked. It is written vertically, and read top to bottom. These features lend it an appearance similar to a real-world script such as traditional Mongolian which is written vertically, and the early Irish Ogham due to the use of a stemline along the characters. Horizontally written variants exist, often when mixed with English text, and notably including the Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite promo.

Translation
A fragmentary understanding of the Phyrexian language has been acquired by the study of those cases where an English translation exists, and a transcription key developed. Transcription efforts are hindered by the low resolution of many samples, which can lead to confusion between similar diacritics. In particular, it is possible that  and   are equivalent.

The art for Dominaria's Phyrexian Scriptures, shared by its artist in high resolution, renewed interest in translation. The text in that artwork appears to be the flavor text of. That translation effort also yielded a proposed syntax tree for the language.

In the study of pronunciation, the most recent theory proposes that the main glyph determines the manner of articulation, while diacritics determine the place of articulation. A further theory suggests that the vowel glyphs are determined by their articulation, rather than being arbitrary. Each vowel is composed of three lines on one side of the staff, one line longer than the other two, sometimes with a "hook" on the long line. The height of the long line indicates closed to openness, the side of the staff indicates front or back vowels, and the presence of a hook indicates roundedness. These can be further modified by diacritics. The same effort produced a partial association of consonant sounds with Phyrexian characters.

Elesh Norn Promo
Phyrexian is used for the card text of.

Dark Discoveries
Phyrexian can be found in the speech bubbles of Dark Discoveries Part 3.

All Will Be One
Phyrexian can be found in each scene of All Will Be One.

According to Doug Beyer, there is a system for pronunciation, and the speech heard in this promotional video is accurately pronounced spoken Phyrexian. It is uncertain if the spoken phrases are pronunciations of the corresponding writing.

New Phyrexia
Phyrexian can be found in each scene of New Phyrexia. Presumably, the non-English speech heard is also accurately pronounced Phyrexian.

Phyrexian Scriptures
Phyrexian can be found in the artwork for.

Phyrexian Altar
Phyrexian can be found in the artwork for.

Mark Rosewater's Instagram
Phyrexian can be found in a picture posted by Mark Rosewater on its Instagram.

Yawgmoth's Testament
Phyrexian can be found in the artwork for.

Phyrexian Swamp
Phyrexian is used for the card text of and the lore blurb describing the Swamp.

Vorinclex, Monstrous Raider
Phyrexian is used for the card text of.

The Five Praetors
Phyrexian is used for the card texts of the praetors in an upcoming Secret Lair and Historic Anthology V

Other
"Ich-Tekik" roughly translates to "reap and give".