Yautja Language

Orthography


One of the hallmarks of the yautja language is its unique approach to orthography, using apostrophe-like
dashes as substitutions of other characters, letters or otherwise. When
expressing a number in the language, it was initially generally
accepted by the Predator fanbase that the quantity of dashes in
a particular character distinguishes what number the character
represents (though this theory could be disputed by the fact that this
would blur the difference between, for example, a character such as the
letter "m" (which consists of three dashes in the language) and the
number 3; the letters "b", "h" and "u" also consist of three dashes,
though each is situated differently. On August 4, 1997 a Jim Sorenson released a TrueType font
designed on the basis of the yautja's self-destruct device's script;
this font did not clarify every mystery of the language's orthography
however, as the numbers 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 0 as well as letters "k"
through to "z" allegedly do not follow through with canonicity.
Regardless, this representation has become the generally accepted
alphabet, until any official recognizing occurs. Letters "a" through
"z" of the yautja alphabet as adapted from Sorenson's font are listed
below.




Vocabulary


A design principle of the yautja language is the great degree of
lexical-cultural correlation in the vocabulary. For example, the words
meaning "hard" and "meat" are "kainde" and "amedha" respectively, but
when used together ("kainde amedha") the phrase takes on a new meaning
and is used to describe a xenomorph,
rather than to describe "hard meat." There is also a plethora of words
relating to death and hunting (hunting is considered a fine art in
yautja culture). This helps lend a particular character to the language.
There is also a number of "jokes" built into the language, including general expletives such as "pauk" and "c'jit" ("fuck" and "shit"
respectively, though the latter can be loosely translated to "damn"),
and insults among inferior male yautja such as "lou-dte kalei"
(generally meaning "woman", though more directly translating to "child
maker").