When his mentor is injured, novice linguist Hakaba is appointed to take over the professor's research in the Netherworld! Though Hakaba has studied the languages of werewolves, lizardpeople, and other Netherworld races from afar, this will be his first field experience coming face-to-face with those so many of his fellow humans have dubbed "monsters." Guided by Susuki, the professor's half-werewolf daughter, Hakaba begins his quest for a greater understanding of the ways people of the Netherworld communicate - even if it does get a bit...hairy at times...!
Heterogenia Linguistico (or Heterogeneous Linguistics) is a fantasy manga by Salt Seno, published in Young Ace magazine since 2018. An English translation has been licensed by Yen Press.
Provides examples of the following tropes:
- Accidental Proposal: Downplayed. Hakaba compliments a lizardman's scales, but this is apparently equivalent to flirting, and Susuki asks if Hakaba was coming on to him.
- Alternate Animal Affection: Werewolves greet each other and show affection by licking. In an effort to be accepted by the tribe, Hakaba licks every one of them back.
- Ambiguously Human: In Mou's village, Hakaba sees a person who looks almost human, but with clawed hands and a long neck. He tries to ask the man what he his, but neither of them understand the other's language. A lizardman tells Hakaba the man is a goblin, which makes him wonder if they consider him a goblin as well.
- Benevolent Monsters: The werewolves, lizard people, minotaurs, and so on are just as sapient as humans, they just communicate in different ways. And far from being "monsters", they all have their own complex cultures and customs, which Hakaba has to learn to navigate. No one has been actively malicious to him, though some behaviors can seem rude or hostile to those unfamiliar with the culture.
- Bizarre Alien Psychology: Hakaba eventually realizes that the monsters seem to have no concept of superstition with even Half-Human Hybrids like Susuki not being able to grasp the idea of a fictional story, nor do they ascribe reasons as to why things happen or see them on a large scale, only the immediate here and now. He becomes depressed when he comes to the realization that this also means that they won't even know that they are under threat from human encroachment until it gets to the point where they're already effectively extinct.
- Blob Monster: In Chapter 3, Hakaba and Susuki meet a slime and communicate with it through vibrations in the ground, and later through a device that's some sort of tube with a cup on each end, one of which is placed against the slime and the other against the ear of the listener. Slimes can split off parts of their bodies and reabsorb them, even if they're not originally from the same slime. The larger they are, the more intelligent they are.
- Cool Old Guy: The Professor seems like a pretty cool guy, and is noticeably gray or white-haired.
- Cunning Linguist: The Professor, though Hakaba is reasonably competent and getting better.
- Descriptively-Named Species: The werewolf names for various species are usually very literal translations: "Knowing Water" for slimes (Blob Monsters), "Big Jaws" for Lizard Folk and dragons (dragons are "Big Big Jaws"), "Furless Ones" for both humans and lizardmen. Lizardmen call werewolves "soft" and krakens "wetlegs". Harpies are called "branchfeet" and lamias are "Winding Jaws".
- Ditto Aliens: Hakaba finds it hard to tell lizardmen apart.
- Fauns and Satyrs: Hakaba and Susuki meet a satyrus in Utatsu, who looks like a bipedal goat with somewhat dexterous hooves.
- Feather Boa Constrictor: About a dozen lamias (wearing small fur coats) coil around Hakaba's torso and arms, and some do the same to Susuki. They seem to use this method to move around in the winter.
- Frog Men: One of the species they meet in Utatsu is a frog person.
- Gingerbread House: Hakaba inadvertently uses edible moss to repair his hut in Utatsu, leading to a centaurus eating the walls and it becoming known as the "edible house".
- Harping on About Harpies: Harpies in this universe don't have any human features, and just look like large, intelligent birds of prey.
- Hates Baths: Susuki doesn't want to get into the geothermal pool when they stop in Utatsu.
- Human Resources: Werewolf resources rather than human, and Zig-Zagged. The werewolves give Hakaba a blanket, since he doesn't have fur to keep him warm. He wonders if it's the pelt of a dead werewolf. Susuki alleviates his fears by explaining that it's made of shed fur glued to a cloth... and the fur is from her dead grandma.
- Humans Are the Real Monsters: The two main human views of the "monster world" are that they're Always Chaotic Evil barbarians, or a source of food and resources. Only Hakaba and the Professor seem to treat them as people (though they're the only two humans we've actually seen in the manga).
- I Ate WHAT?!: The werewolves give Hakaba an unknown but tasty circular disc of food for breakfast. When he asks what it is, they answer with a word he doesn't know yet. Later, he checks the Professor's notes and discovers it's a slice of giant earthworm. In a later chapter he eats some fresh worm guts, knowing exactly what they are, and admits it's pretty good.
- I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: "Death Village" turns out to be a temporary trading post that's only inhabited part of the year. It is also a place where dragons go to die, so that may be the source of the name.
- Indo-European Alien Language: Averted and lampshaded. Most of the monster languages aren't even spoken as we would understand, and rely on body language, colors, vibrations in the ground, or smells. In Chapter 26, Hakaba muses on how modern Werewolf (as opposed to old Werewolf) is similar in grammatical structure to human languages (probably Japanese), and wonders why.
- Iyashikei: The plot is a low-stakes fantasy adventure exploring the different cultures of fantastic creatures.
- Kraken and Leviathan: Kraken, which look like giant octopuses, come to the seaside village to trade with land-dwellers.
- Little Bit Beastly: Compared to the rest of her people, Susuki looks mostly human aside from her ears and tail. When she takes off her outer clothing we see that she's also covered in fur on her arms and legs (though she may have started growing it as part of her winter coat).
- Lizard Folk: Among the many species Hakaba meets are lizardmen. Their heads look just like an alligator or crocodile's.
- Monster Town: Hakaba visits many villages populated by Wolf Men, Lizard Folk, and many other species. They're all Benevolent Monsters.
- Monstrous Cannibalism: Dragons apparently see nothing wrong with eating their dead, though Hakaba is shocked to find out the meat he just ate is from the parent of the dragon he just met. When he asks his traveling companions how they would feel about being eaten after death, they all seem fine with it as well. Susuki even seems offended by Hakaba refusing to eat her if she died.
- No Party Like a Donner Party: When he dies in the middle of winter, the inhabitants of Utatsu eat the centaurus. Hakaba and even Susuki are pretty sad about it, though.
- The Nose Knows: Much of werewolf communication is based on smell rather than sound or body language. Hakaba, having a human's limited sense of smell, finds it tough to keep up.
- Our Centaurs Are Different: Centaurus look nothing like classical centaurs, and more like sapient horses with dexterous paws instead of hooves.
- Our Minotaurs Are Different: In the "Village of Death", Hakaba, Susuki, and the lizard people Kashoo and Kekoo meet a minotaur named Mou (or that's the closest equivalent they can pronounce). He's a bit scary at first, but once they figure out how to communicate he proves to be a Gentle Giant.
- Our Orcs Are Different: Orcs in this setting are Pig Men with thick fur.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: Werewolves are a race of Wolf Men who can interbreed with humans, but apparently can't transform.
- Shown Their Work: Hakaba breaks the fourth wall to explain how the different bodies of humans, werewolves, and lizardmen limit the types of sounds each can make, and therefore influences their languages. Additionally, werewolves' colorblindness means they can't fully understand color-based communication like kraken language or written Lizardmanese. Hakaba's process of learning unknown languages by trial and error, and comparing them to known languages, is similar to the real-world process of studying an unresearched language.
- Snake People: Lamias look nothing like humans, more like large snakes with two arms.
- Starfish Language: The whole point of the manga is not only to establish how language works in different species with different specialized senses, but also to explore how those species communicate with others given the language barriers involved.
- Werewolf language involves scents as well as sounds and body language.
- Written Lizardmanese just looks like large colored smudges on paper (as in, filling the entire page), but Hakaba is sure there's a deeper meaning.
- Krakens communicate by changing their color, just like cephalopods in real life. Since werewolves don't have good color vision, they also communicate with gestures.
- Harpies have a completely different vocal range, so lizardmen and werewolves communicate with them through body language.
- Tastes Like Purple: The lizardmen have a very strong sense of color, and connect specific pigments to scents.
- Tentacled Terror: The baby kraken isn't very terrifying, but the adult one is gigantic and sends Susuki running for cover.
- Third-Person Person: Susuki refers to herself in the third person.
- Token Mini-Moe: Susuki, the adorable half-werewolf girl who's Hakaba's guide.
- Translation Convention: Different languages are rendered in different fonts, and words Hakaba doesn't understand are rendered as black boxes (█). Some hard-to-translate concepts like "MNH" (something along the lines of "does not mix", but also meaning "fight"), WOOF! (the name of a giant earthworm eaten by many species), and EEEU (presumably an occupation, likely involving foraging for plants) are left untranslated.
- Wonderful Werewolf: The first village Hakaba visits is one inhabited by werewolves (they don't transform and are more like Wolf Men), where his mentor the Professor previously did his research on their language and culture (and even had a kid with one, who ends up serving as Hakaba's guide). As with the other "monsters" in the setting, none of them are hostile to Hakaba, though it takes him a while to adapt to their cultural norms.
- The Xenophile: Hakaba and the Professor are anthropologists and linguists who only want to learn about the cultures and languages of nonhuman species.
- You're Drinking Breast Milk: Played with. Minotaurs aren't exactly humans or cows, but they make cheese out of their own milk. Hakaba has no reservations about eating it, and he milks one since her kids don't drink as much anymore.
