An Introduction to Ancient Grammar

Learn the basics of how the Ancient language is structured to more easily solve long sentences with lots of undiscovered words (or just to show off your Big Huang Energy).

Introduction

The Ancient language at the center of Heaven's Vault consists of a short list of simple symbols that are combined in creative (yet consistent) ways to make a whole dictionary of words for you to discover throughout your playthroughs. This guide is not a list of the meanings of those symbols (figuring that out for yourself is the best part of the game), but if you find yourself struggling to solve longer sentences that contain lots of words you haven't discovered yet, it might help for you to understand some of the basics of how the language is structured. Learning Ancient grammar is part of the fun, so if you want to put that together on your own, stop reading and go find more artifacts to examine. But if you want a small head start in your deciphering, then let's get started.

Basic Parts of Speech

Nouns (و)

This symbol comes at the beginning of most common nouns, like in the word water above.
Sometimes you'll see this symbol upside down at the start of a word, which denotes an abstract noun, like freedom. There are other characters that come at the beginning of specific types of nouns, like places, people, and animals, but those I'll leave for you to discover on your own.

Verbs (رر)

The double-comma symbol comes at the start of verbs, like in pray above.
Note that this symbol will also appear in verb forms acting as different parts of speech. For example, the game doesn't differentiate between "The building was destroyed" and "He walked to the destroyed building" even though the second example is acting as an adjective.

Adjectives (ر.)

This symbol introduces an adjective, like holy above.

---

These three symbols are useful to recognize in long, run-together sentences since they come at the beginnings of words—except when they come immediately after...

Connecting Characters

The Ancient script has two connecting characters, the bullet (•) and the colon (:). These symbols let you know that a word isn't finished. They get used a lot in longer words that describe abstract concepts that are difficult to express using the language's limited list of characters. You can find one in the title of the game, used in the word heaven, below:



Ordinarily, you'd spot that noun marker (see previous section) and peg that as the start of a new word, but because it comes after that bullet (•), you know that it's just another part of the previous word. A lot of longer words that you begin to find later in the game and in New Game+ are made up of shorter ones you might already have in your dictionary that are tied together with bullets and colons to create a more complicated meaning. When you're trying to parse long, run-together sentences, you'll know you're on the wrong path if you notice that you're leaving bullets and colons open at the end or a beginning of a phrase. You'll only find these guys in the middle of words.

Possessives

The backward-apostrophe symbol in the Ancient language (‘) can be used to represent certain short prepositions (of, than) but usually denotes a possessive noun. The reason this character is significant in deciphering long sentences is that the game considers nouns and their possessive forms separate words. Even if you have heaven (see previous section) in your dictionary, you might not have heaven's, below.



So although you may have discovered the base word, the game won't give you credit for placing it in an unknown sentence if it's looking for the possessive form. You'll need to "discover" that one separately.

Conclusion

Hopefully this very basic introduction has given you a solid foundation for your own linguistic journey in Heaven's Vault. There are so many more Ancient characters for you to uncover and learn about. Hopefully, by the end of the game, you'll be reading Ancient sentences before the game even gives you a chance to start filling words in. When you realize that you can understand a sentence before Aliya can, you'll be in great shape.

[The Sojourner]

Great guide! Maybe you could also make one explaining the rest of the glyphs? I've noticed some themes, such as "/|\" representing beams/light, or the circle-within-a-circle representing anything temporal, for example . Feels like etymology!

[The Sojourner]

My additional observations:

• There is a character for past tense as well. It comes right after the verb marker.
• There is also an "x" marker for negation. Like with the genitive (i.e. possessive, but a little broader, linguistically speaking), negated words are counted separately, so even though you might have "will", you might not yet have "will-not".
• If you forget which marker is which, the (concrete) noun marker means "thing", and the verb marker means "do".
• If you see a shape resembling a "?", that is likely an interrogative word such as "what".
• The numbering system is multiplicative: two number glyphs directly next to each other mean "multiply these numbers". In addition, the "|°" glyph means "raised to the power of" in the context of numbers. The low squiggly line, which means "and", can be used for addition if necessary.

[Shewired]

Thanks for this! As a linguistic nerd, I am totally enamored with this game. I totally agree with Witsicism - more games like this!!

[Usual_Emergency]

The • comes after a category glyph and : is a subject/object relationship. the U glyphs indicate numbers; empty=0, single •=1, single slash=2, • and slash=3, double slash=4, line across bottom=5, line and •=6, line and slash=7, line slash and •=8, line and double slash=9

[vaguelydemonicraven]

What's the difference between : and •?

[Witsicism]

I feel good when I see my computer surrounded with weird notes on bits of paper.

[Witsicism]

YAS. I want more games like this.

[cheesar]

Just talked to Huang about this. He said that (رر) emphasises thoughts or ideas. Don't really know what he means by that, but you might want to put it in the guide

['GostLy]

I just started Heaven's Vault so thanks for posting this!

[Pat Springleaf]

Quite disappointed – and surprised – that it took this long for someone to make this! I never realised the bullet and colon connection. Thanks!