The battle of the Ice Claws written in hoolian
Hoolian is the language of the owls of the Southern Kingdoms. It is frequently used through the series; however, it seems that, similar to Tolkien's Westron, it has been almost entirely translated into English.
Origin[]
In the Guardians of Ga'Hoole series, the two main languages are the language of the Northern Kingdoms, Krakish, and the language of the Southern Kingdoms, Hoolian. The origin of Hoolian is unclear. While the name Hoolian would seem to imply that the language originates from King Hoole, Hoole and the founders of Ga'Hoole presumably spoke Krakish due to all of them being from the Northern Kingdoms. Hoolian may be a language derived from Krakish, or Hoolian may be a new name given to a preexisting southern language - it is unknown which of these is the case.
Script[]
The scripts of the owl languages is never really described, apart from one case in The Outcast on page 27, where Coryn is learning to read. He describes the letters R and Y as if they were written in English.
In The Rise of A Legend on page 9's footnote, Ezylryb mentions the word for "crazy" in Hoolian is "yoicks"
In A Guide Book to the Great Tree, Otulissa is seen writing a text consisting of dashes and dots written from left to right.
In Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'hoole, the artists credited South Asian influences when coming up with the writing and visual culture of the owls. In the movie, Hoolian script bears similarities to Chinese calligraphy, Mongolian script and Balinese. The lines are read from top to bottom like Chinese, but the page is read from left to right, like English.
It is unlikely the script created for the movie is a functional language. In some cases, the script is actually stylized English.
Proto-Owl[]
It is assumed that the Owl Kingdoms at one point spoke one language, being split off from the same ancestral bird. Traces of this language seem to be difficult to concoct, as the closest languages we have are Krakish, which seems to be Germanic/Slavic in grammar and phonology, and Jouzhen, which seems to be based off of Chinese/Asiatic tonal languages.
Gallery[]
