I'm bored, so I'm making an asinine topic that we can overanalyze and discuss. Yup, it's one of those threads. Anywho, I've noticed while rewatching Season 1 that there are several examples of the ponies having their own written language, like this example: Fig 1. Those purple symbols are words, believe it or not. But do any of us have any idea what they mean? Do they mean anything, or are they just a random collection of symbols chosen by one of the artists? I've never heard anything about it, no staff has said anything about it as far as I know...but considering the huge fandom I'm surprised that there has never been a single discussion about this. In my personal opinion, given that this is a cartoon and not Star Trek, I'm inclined to believe that a complete, logical written language does not actually exist and that it's merely a jumble of random symbols. But...it'd be cool if it was, if someone had the inclination to decipher it. Anyway...opinions and stuff, go.
Oh, well this is easily deciphered. It says "Lightening bolt, swirly, unicorn, unicorn, rainbow, lightening bolt, swirly, pony, olive, horn, horseshoe, crescent moon, star, rainbow, pony, lightening bolt, unicorn, horseshoe, swirly, horseshoe, swirly, unicorn, lightening bolt, rainbow, pony." In all seriousness though, it appear they use hieroglyphs. Well, maybe. I mean spikes writings, while scribbles, doesn't look like it could be this. Then again, scribbles is just a common animation trick to save on time while they focused on this. Plus, now that I looked it up, they showed that Spike's list in Spike at your Service is entirely picture based. Throwing that on top of this is interesting. If their language is all picture based, it would make some of those letters rather impressive. However, while writing this, I remember that, in the first episode, Twilight had to change her wording in a letter because Spike couldn't figure out how to spell it. I suppose that could go either way with this, but I think its more a coin in the jar of them using English.
So we got English, literal pictures, and hieroglyphics. Well...backwards-ish English anyway. Maybe the heiroglyphics are for formal purposes.... Eh...I'm just gonna assume there is no logic to this whatsoever.
The heiroglyphic type thing would probably be saying "This event is on this day at this time in this location.." but or course I have no specifics to that because I do not read formal-pony language lol. Maybe Canterlot type or some sort? and Ponyville just writes in backwards English perhaps?
I remember in one of letters to Celestia (I think in season 1), you could read Spike write "Celestia" in normal Latin alphabet. It may be case that they have several alphabets in Equestria, like for example in Japanese or Chinese. And proof that language doesn't have to be "exotic", in Serbia are 2 official alphabets. Latin alphabet and Cyrillic alphabet, same language.
