 The Al Bhed speak their own 'language' which is really just a substitution cipher of English, a system of transposing certain letters for others; however, within the game world, it is intended to be an actual language. The original Japanese version of the cipher uses the syllable-based kana system of writing where each symbol represents a combination of "consonant + vowel" or simply a vowel. Certain keywords are not translated into Al Bhed in the game, to give the impression of use of loanwords compared to modern foreign languages. Most keywords are proper nouns, but some common nouns also are not translated, such as "fiend" (e.g. Y fiend! Eh risyh teckieca! [A fiend! In human disguise!]). Alexander Smith, decided to "map common phonemes in English to common phonemes in Welsh" and gave preference to Welsh pronunciations, but had to work with new diphthongs to maintain consistency in the Al Bhed language.
