I AM ERROR. YOU ARE GLUE.
IT BOUNCES OFF ME AND IF ALL ELSE FAILS USE FIRE.
People love to make memes out of really stupid things. Like me and my fixation of making "eyyy" and "helklo" acceptable ways of greeting people. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link has had a meme since the dawn of the internet.
I AM
ERROR.
Three simple words. Would you really believe people would make a big deal out of it? FO's already fussed over it already, but I, being a total fagtastic nerdwad who also likes crushing people's hopes and dreams, am willing to get delving into the Nippon rendition of the phrase.
Because I like educating and sharing my knowledge.
And because squashing stupid internet theories makes me feel like a big man.
オレノナハ
エラー ダ...
The game's only font is Katakana, a simplified alphabet generally used for transliterating foreign words. It shares all it sounds with Hiragana, the primary Japanese alphabet (there's also Kanji but I'm not Mr. Language around here I'm just debunking some nerdy video game shit), so all it needs to do is to sound like Hiragana and they get the gist of it. Yeah, I know the last letter of the top sentence in-game doesn't look much like ハ (the lines are bending the wrong way!), but I checked the graphic data and that letter is in the place where ハ is expected to be, so nyeh.
Anyway, the phrase would sound like this:
"Orenonaha
Eraa da..."
The line (ー) is a long vowel sound, which I made into an extra A to show how it's pronounced (not era as in epoch you dumb-dumb). If you want to be pedantic you could replace the "R"s with "L"s, but I will not stand for that. Converting those sounds into Hiragana would get you:
"おれのなは
えらー だ"
And now it can finally be translated!
"おれ" is the masculine term for "I."
"の" indicates possession. You own a name, don't you?
"なは" are separate terms that indicate he's telling you his name. And what is his name?
"Eraa."
(because it's going to sound the same in both alphabets, see.)
"えらー" (the Hiragana equivalent) means nothing (though it does mean "big" if you remove the ー), so you go with the sound. Eraa.
The Japanese language is spoken quickly and if it were to recreate every piece in its own alphabet it would be awkward and unwieldy, but to us it's what distinctly flavours it. We pronounce 'error' as "eh-rer" or "eh-ror". An elongated "A" sound is generally recognised as the closest equivalent of an English "er." For instance, take some officially-recognised-by-dictionaries transliterations of English words: Carpenter (カーペンター kaa-pen-taa), spider (スパイダー su-pai-daa) and Bomberman (ボンバーマン bon-baa-man).
There's a theory that Error's name is actually meant to be Errol, but obviously without a second R/L sound that can't be right. I'm no pro on the language (despite the smartass attitude I've been displaying), but I believe if they wanted Errol, it would've been Eraaru (エラール), since a "U" sound is the closest the language can get to a short sound. For instance, the name Kasumi. In English it would probably be pronounced as Kah-Soo-Me, whereas in Japanese it would roughly be Kahs-oo-Me. It's hardly to portray in text, but the "U" sound is quite short; it's close to simply being Kahs-Me, but it's not totally silent, y'know. Just short.
Errol isn't his name. Not to mention there's the simple matter of "Eraaru" not being officially recognised as a Katakana approximation of the word.
All dictionaries and sources explicitly say that "エラー" is "Error."
No, it doesn't mean all the other definitions for the same meaning (mistake/blunder/cock-up/SNAFU/presidential assassination by a blind mule), "エラー" is distinctly recognised as the single word "error."
There you have it.
And that last symbol (だ) is merely plain copula. If he were polite he'd be saying "desu" but he's just talking to a stranger so it's "da."
Now that we know, don't laugh over how Error is proclaiming himself to be a glitch in the world in a grammatically incorrect manner. Instead, laugh because he's giving you his honest-to-goodness name, and how Bagu is a wants a letter sent to him, whose name means a computer glitch - more specifically, a bug. Get it? Error and Bug? Both technical slip-ups? IT IS VERY HILARIOUS JA JA JA
Laughing time is over.
Now, seriously, are we going to shut up about Error now? Error's name is no more hilarious than Solieyu Belmont or Jimmy Carter, and his statement is grammatically correct. Let it be, people. Let it be.
