Runic language

Yorda attempts to communicate with Ico, but the two speak a very different language.

Though both Shadow of the Colossus and ICO utilize fictional languages, there is a special element exclusive to ICO in the form of a runic language used by Yorda. Ico cannot understand her language and must instead communicate with Yorda in very basic verbal and physical terms.

The language was conceived by Team Ico member Kei Kuwabara. The language's writing system resembles hieroglyphs and are decoded using a simple cipher method (i.e., one symbol stands for "A", another symbol stands for "B", etc.).

Symbol Chart

Symbol correspondence

The symbols in this language each resemble a word in real-world languages; the first letter of the word is the letter the symbol translates to (with one exception where the word "eye" is used to represent I). The symbols are:

A: ant	H: hide	O: octopus	V: victim
B: bird	I: eye	P: pigeon	W: wing
C: cage	J: Jiisan	Q: queen	X: xoanon
D: daughter	K: kneel	R: river	Y: yoke
E: east	L: larva	S: shower	Z: zipper
F: fall	M: moon, mountain	T: tree
G: giant	N: north	U: union

Translating the language manually

1. Translate the runes into their corresponding letters to get a word in backwards Romaji.
2. Flip the order of the letters to form the Romaji word. The tricky part here is that a few vowels will often be missing; one will need to figure out what they are and where they go in order to get a real word. (This was an intentional linguistic move by Kuwabara to make Yorda's speech seem more delicate and ethereal.) Fortunately, Yorda's speech is very basic, and with a bit of linguistic common sense, it's relatively easy to find where the vowels were taken out.
3. Once the final Romaji word is discovered, translate it using whatever means desired to get the word in English.

Trivia

• While Yorda always speaks this language, the Queen uses it only once, when speaking directly to Yorda during the Queen's first appearance at the castle gate. In the rest of her lines and when addressing Ico, she speaks what seems to be the same subtitled language that he uses.
• This chart may prove especially useful for players of the U.S. version of the game, as Yorda's dialogue is not translated when starting a second game.