Here are explanations for all the annotated phrases:
- (1) She-who-talks-with-spirits
A direct translation of the Aztec word “See-o-ahtlah-ma-kas-kay” (cioatlamacasque) for “raccoon” which was also used for the name of the raccoon goddess in Sandra and Woo. - (2) Hrair
A word taken from the lapine language in Richard Adam’s epic novel Watership Down about a group of rabbits, meaning “A big, uncountable number”. Matthew and I invented the word “walu” for it in Toki Pona. - (3) orbit
A paraphrase for “year”: one orbit around the sun. - (4) the spirits talked to HER that it’s time to search for a new homeland
Seeoahtlahmakaskay’s forefathers urged her to find a new home for her species. - (5) brothers and sisters
Coatis and kinkajous, the species closest related to the raccoons apart from the ring-tailed cat. They are depicted inside the sun at the bottom of the page. - (6) left the land of the endless summer
Seeoahtlahmakaskay, resp. the raccoons, left the southern parts of Latin America, the natural habitat of the other members of the Procyonidae family. South America is symbolized by the sun. - (7) on her way north
Seeoahtlahmakaskay, resp. the raccoons, migrated to North America about 2.5 million years ago. Seeoahtlahmakaskay’s way north is depicted in the illustration. - (8) haunters
Predators or raccoons such as the depicted wolf and eagle. - (9) At day, SHE rested
Raccoons are mostly nocturnal animals. - (10) glowing paws
The paws of raccoons are extremely sensitive, and Seeoahtlahmakaskay’s are even glowing! - (11) oak
Tree hollows of old oaks are one of the favorite denning sites of raccoons. The oak is depicted in the illustration as Seeoahtlahmakaskay’s destination. - (12) Evergreen Forest
A reference to the TV cartoon show The Raccoons which took place in the Evergreen Forest. - (13) masked ones
The self-designation of raccoons. Since the black mask is such an important feature of the species, the word for it was mapped to a single character in the encryption that consists of a fitting double “oo”. - (14) None of us is like the others
Raccoons are known for their large differences in character and size. - (15) HER divinity now also flows through our paws and unveils the nature of the world
The sense of touch is the most important sense to raccoons. Seeoahtlahmakaskay giving the raccoons this godly gift is the main subject of this page’s illustration. In addition, the right circle shows a paw print. - (16) All masked ones may search for a new home when they hear HER call
Raccoons leave their mother’s home range after adolescence. Male raccoons typically move further away than females. Seeoahtlahmakaskay’s call is the subject of the bottom circle. - (17) All masked ones may overcome challenges with agility and craftiness
The left circle shows the weapon used by the thief Sly Cooper from the Sly Cooper video game series to symbolize their craftiness and mischievousness. - (18) the first wise ones hadn’t met at Potbelly Hill ten thousand orbits ago
“Wise ones” is the raccoons’ designation for humans. Potbelly Hill is the English name of Göbekli Tepe, a very important archaeological site of social or ritual nature dating back to the 10th–8th millennium BCE. It’s one of the first impressive symbols of human civilization. The illustrated crustacean is based on a stone relief found at Göbekli Tepe. - (19) the One
God resp. the God of Life. - (20) the None
The Devil resp. the God of Death. - (21) whom they only left the other side, and subdued the world
It’s alleged here that the humans defeated God and the Devil who had lived on Earth until then. After their defeat, God and the Devil had to retreat to the afterlife, the other side, while the humans took over the material world. - (22) First, the wise ones came over us, and then we came over them
Raccoons were heavily hunted for their fur by American settlers. But in the 20th century, raccoons have begun to “invade” human settlements, making Toronto the “raccoon capital of the world” in the process. - (23) fortresses of fear
Fur farms. Shown on the left side of the illustration behind the raccoon. - (24) forests of stone and glass
Cities. Shown on the right side of the illustration behind the raccoon. - (25) Some enslaved masked ones were brought to foreign worlds by the wise ones
Raccoons were held in fur farms in several European and Asian countries. - (26) when the world was in flames
The time of the two World Wars between 1914 and 1945. - (27) bird tyrant
Two pairs of pet raccoons were released into the German countryside at the Edersee reservoir in the north of Hesse in April 1934 upon request of their owner, the poultry farmer Rolf Haag. He released them two weeks before receiving permission from the Prussian hunting office to “enrich the fauna” this way. Rolf Haag is symbolized by the anthropomorphic turkey that shows the two raccoons the way to freedom. - (28) death bird
A second German population of raccoons was established in eastern Germany in 1945 when 25 raccoons escaped from a fur farm at Wolfshagen, east of Berlin, after an air strike. The bomber is symbolized by the giant fire bird that destroys the exit gate. In the background on the right side, one can see two raccoons that already escaped. - (29) As they began to conquer the new world
The raccoon populations established by the released or escaped raccoons flourished in Germany and eventually even in the neighboring countries. - (30) we bored our way deeper and deeper into the forests of stone and glass
Raccoons have now lived in urban habitats for many generations and become increasingly accommodated to the new environment. - (31) where our mothers and fathers still failed, our kits will succeed
Raccoons are intelligent animals and capable of social learning to some extend. - (32) We’ve never been more, and we’ll never be fewer again
The total number of raccoons on Earth has never been higher than in the 21st century. They are one of the most successful animal species and will soon be found all over the northern hemisphere.
Here are the steps that were carried out to arrive at the encrypted version seen at [500] The Book of Woo:
- I did not want to use a standard encryption method to encrypt the English text. When looking for alternative ways to obfuscate the original text, I stumbled upon the constructed language Toki Pona which has only 118 words. I found that limited vocabulary to be a good fit for a text written by a raccoon.
- I worked together with Matthew Martin, one of the leading Toki Pona experts, who translated the majority of the text into Toki Pona.
- The first sentence in English: “She-who-talks-with-spirits was the first one with a mask.”
- The first sentence in Toki Pona: “soweli meli li nimi e ni: soweli meli li toki poka kon sewi. wan la meli suli la ona li jo e oko pimeja.”
- Translated back into English: “She (the lady animal) named this: She talks with the spirits. Firstly, the great woman, she had black eyes.”
- To mask the low number of characters in Toki Pona, I used every “o” as a switch between use of small letters and use of capital letters:
- sOWELI MELI LI NIMI E NI: Soweli meli li tOKI Poka kON SEWI. WAN LA MELI SULI LA ona li jO E oko PIMEJA.
- To mask the low word length in Toki Pona, I connected short words with each other:
- sOWELI MELI#LI NIMI E#NI: Soweli meli-li tOKI Poka-kON SEWI. WAN#LA MELI SULI#LA ona-li-jO E @ PIMEJA.
- I then mapped each Latin character to the character set invented by me. Our fan Foogod later created the WooGlyph Sans font for it.
Here is the complete text in Toki Pona. (There is one spelling error where “toke” was used instead of “toki”):
soweli meli li nimi e ni: soweli meli li toki poka kon sewi. wan la meli suli la ona li jo e oko pimeja. tenpo nanpa walu sike pini la ona li open lon li kon sewi li kute e kon sewi. kon sewi li toke e ni: o alasa e ma mama sin. ona meli li pana e nimi “mi tawa” tawa jan sama ale sama li tawa tan ma pi suno pi pini ala. tenpo tawa tenpo, tawa ma lete la ona meli li lukin e ken pi moli en pakala. tawa pona en sona pona la sona ona la kon sewi ike li moli ala e ona meli. tenpo suno la ona lape. tenpo pimeja la noka suno li pana e nasin tawa ona lon tan ma pimeja, lon tawa ma suno. pini pi tawa suli la ona li kama tawa ma pini. ma pini li kasi suli lon ma pi kasi suli pi kule laso pi tenpo ale.
soweli meli li toki poka kon sewi li mama meli pi soweli ale pi sinpin pi oko pimeja. mi soweli li sama ala e soweli ante. nasin ni la mi soweli li sama: meli suli li pilin luka e soweli ale kepeken luka sewi pi ona pi meli suli. tan ni la wawa sewi li tawa lon luka pi mi mute li sitelen e nasin pi ma pi kasi suli. nasin sewi pi meli suli li lon lawa mi mute. soweli ali pi oko pimeja li wile tawa sama meli suli. soweli li kute e nimi pi ona sewi la soweli pi sinpin ale pi oko pimeja li alasa e ma sin. tawa pona en sona pona la soweli pi sinpin pi oko pimeja li anpa e pakala. soweli pi oko pimeja li kepeken mute e luka li kepeken lili e wawa ante.
tenpo sike pi nanpa walu la soweli ni li musi lon ma pi kasi suli pi laso pi tenpo ale. ala li ante. taso tenpo sike suno 10000 la jan sona wan li kama tawa sinpin en sinpin lon ma pi ma nena pi insa suli. jan li anpa e wan e ale. ale la li lon poka ante. jan sona li tawa ma mi. mi li tawa ma pi jan sona. jan mute li pilin ike tawa mi. jan mute li pilin olin tawa mi. jan lili li pilin e sona lon pi mi soweli. mi sowli mute li kama jo e pilin pakala e moli lon tomo suli monsuta. soweli mute ante li kama jo e pona kin lon ma pi kasi suli tan kiwen en kiwen pi kule ala pi jan sona ni.
jan sona mute li lon ma ante e soweli pi oko pimeja. taso tenpo seli pi ma ale la waso lawa ike en waso moli ike li open e tomo uta tawa pali ala tawa soweli pali pi nanpa lili. soweli li anpa e ma sin. mi soweli li tawa insa ma pi kasi suli tawa insa ma pi kiwen en kiwen pi kule ala. mi soweli li kama sona mute. mama mije en mama meli li anpa. taso tenpo kama la soweli lili li sewi! tenpo ni kin la nanpa pi soweli mi li suli! tenpo kama la nanpa li kama ala lili. luka wan li lon uta kiwen pi ilo moli. luka tu wan li lon ma pi musi en moli ala! tenpo pi soweli pi oko pimeja li sin!
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Is the English text of the “Book of Woo” okay like this? I’ve never shown it to an English editor.
I don’t see any errors reading it over.
Well I think it’s clear now why you didn’t get any solutions.
Finally, we have the answer. Did not expect the use of a constructed language. Well played, Novil. Well played.
This makes sense, translating into another language, since you’d want it to be doable for both english and german users. That said though, damn it’s hard.
@ Novil:
The only thing I noticed: If I’m reading it right, “upon” at the end of the second page should probably be “over”.
I can’t say I was on the right track for that final clue; you really have to know the language to catch that one. Nice to read the decoded story either way!
In regards to spell/grammar checks:
* On page 1, is the use of “haunters” intentional as opposed to “hunters”?
* On page 2, the phrasing “all masked ones rely on their paws upon all other senses” doesn’t sound quite right. Perhaps “their paws above all other senses” would work better here, or “over” as Rex suggested.
* On page 3, if the fortresses of fear are owned by more than a single wise one the apostrophe ought to be “wise ones’ fortresses” as opposed to “wise one’s fortresses”.
All minor quibbles though and not necessarily wrong depending on the original intention.
Really great challenge (even if no one completed it) Enjoyed getting to see the decrypted version.
Yeaaaah, I can see why it didn’t get solved. That’s way more than a needle in a haystack to use a conlang like that, Novil….
I’m not crying, I’m just allergic to all these feelings.
I remember first seeing the Book of Woo in 8th grade and burning with curiosity, I can’t believe that the translation’s finally here
It’s like Okami and Watership Down had a baby and I love it.
That was truly enjoyable to read. I really enjoyed how the raccoons perceived the world. Definitely worth the wait! (Although, then again, I joined up around #900, so I didn’t have to wait quite as long)
WOW!!
Just WOW!!
We FINALLY get The Book of Woo.
A fitting #1000.
Don’t worry, Novil, for a raccoon, beg pardon, masked one, the english is perfect.
Nice! I think the decoding went really well. People figured out the “o” switch, and the fact that the language was made of small words. We even figured out what were consonants and vowels, and guessed the “n”.
At this point, the only thing that was really missing was somebody knowing about toki pona and making the connection 🙂
Honestly, I’m surprised people recognized the Toki Pona from the filler strip’s hint. I’ve never even remotely heard about it. It was the one piece missing, as we can see that the Toki Pona transliteration is both super-close to the existing transliterations, and also super close to the final decoded result.
Thing is, it’s too obscure, and this text isn’t large enough to “learn” Toki Pona if you don’t already know the language. Especially since it has its own original grammar, and is not simply a relex. It just came down to whether one of the people staring at the transliteration happened to have heard about Toki Pona, and it “clicked”.
Who’s Matthew Martin? Toki Pona is not invented by him.
Wonderful mythology.
Wow. Just wow. :-O
For those interested in constructed agglutinative languages like toki pona, Umberto Eco wrote “The search for the perfect language”. It is basically a long history of why constructed languages don’t work. A major factor is that threading together units of meaning will tend to be ambiguous, so having fewer than 120 such units doesn’t avoid the reader having to know what some of the multi-unit constructions mean.
That’s my excuse for not coming within a parsec or two of translating it, anyway.
@ Novil:
Wonderful illustrations in addition to the text. Thank you!
Love the reference to Watership Down, my favorite book of all time.
Amazing, thank you!
Like the acknowledgement of The Raccoons series. Good times, good times.
Nice Sly Cooper callback.
I’m glad we finally have the translation. As was suspected, it was in another language. I stand by the assertion that the “plain text” as far the the decryption goes is in Toki Pona and not English or German as there’s no way to get back to the “original” text even with the correct Toki Pona… just something close.
Still, this was very well done, and I’m surprised how close we were to solving it. We knew about the symbol flipping, we knew about “fake characters” (although we didn’t know what they meant), and we suspected another language was being used. If only someone could have made the connection with Toki Pona, we’d have had it years ago.
It’s been nearly 5 years since this was released. Happy 1000th comic, and may there be many more!
P.S. For those wondering how Toki Pona was figured out from the hint, just google “mi tawa”.
@Novil.
Super pedantic here but I know you always seek perfection in your scripts…
Page 1 …her way north but, with agility and craftiness, SHE evaded …
Page 1 After a long journey she finally (reads better to me without two commas in the sentence but is optional).
Page 2 I agree with others “upon” probably not the right word, “over” or “above” as previously suggested.
Finally, a question. Is there a reason Rolf Haag is represented as a Turkey?
Many thanks for your wonderful body of work in this series and congratulations on achieving (almost) 1000 strips. Your commitment is appreciated.
I’m so exited for the 1000th strip that I can already feel my disappointment.
I’ve got a mixed feelings about this. “Some other language” theory was proposed multiple times, and Toki Pona definitely appears on the first google page for “constructed language”, but it seems nobody took the liberty of reading its wikipedia page. Maybe we weren’t taking the task seriously? Or the community was too small to be creative? Nevertheless, we failed. I know it appears easier after the answer is known, but it certainly seems doable to me.
Now i get the impression that it’s not that the Voinich manuscript is crazy encrypted, but the researchers can’t see the half-obvious.
For years I’ve longed for the story behind the Woo Manuscript, but now that I have it I’m a bit conflicted. There was something special about not knowing exactly what was within, and every time I reread the series I would craft a brand new story to fit the pictograms.
The defeating god and the devil, forcing the supernatural entities aside while humans inherited the earth reminds me of the transition from the Age of Gods to the Age of Man in the Nasuverse (the multiverse shared between Tsukihime, Kara no Kyoukai, Mahoyo, and most famously Fate/stay night and its many offshoots).
As for Toronto… skunks have actually beat out raccoons in some of the neighbourhoods here lately. Or maybe the raccoons moved out so the skunks moved in? Whatever the case, Toronto does indeed have a severe raccoon problem. Still, after being a fan of this series for years, I can’t help but root for them a bit.
What I want to know is how you missed the perfect opportunity to use “kijetesantakalu”
@ hitomi2500:
Do you have any idea how many languages there are, not even counting imaginary “constructed” ones? We didn’t even know we had finished deciphering it, let alone that the next step really was to “read” it as a constructed language. For anyone that didn’t know of such a simplistic constructed language, it appeared that we were still missing a step to get to the proper format to read it in whatever language it was.
It was basically searching a haystack for a needle we didn’t even know existed. It’s not surprising no one bothered to really delve deep into it.
By the way, it should be noted that doing a broad search for a language only 14 characters doesn’t lead to Toki Pona because it’s so obscure. You won’t even find it on this page:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_writing_systems
And thanks to the “fakes” and relatively short text, the low word count was hidden, the only real way to track down Toki Pona prior to the final hint.
hey, amateur Toki Ponist here, pretty sure the language was invented by a linguist named Sonja Lang.
Dang, if only jan Misali (primary Toki Pona teacher) was as popular as he is now, maybe someone would have connected it