Minecraft is, uh... well it's not really a portmanteau.
A portmanteau is something like "smog", combined from "smoke" and "fog",
and in "minecraft" we still have the full morphemes, just put into one word...
So really it's just a... sequence of "mine" and "craft"?
Now, you might ask, why are these two seemingly unrelated verbs being put
together into a single noun? Well, see "Minecraft" isn't just any noun,
it's a proper noun, it's got that capital "M" going for it...
Because it's the name of a little known video game where people place blocks,
blow each other up with TNT, kill dragons with beds, and eat loads of apples.
One block in Minecraft is this thing. This is an Enchanting Table, though it was originally known
as an "Enchantment Table", and everyone is still confused about it, including the Wiki, apparently.
This block is used to get rid of lapis lazuli,
and incidentally apply upgrades to weapons, armor, and tools.
But what's more interesting about this block to me is this:
When you put an enchantable item into an Enchanting Table, you get three options,
each complete with a guaranteed enchantment - like "Protection",
which just strengthens your armor - but you also get this little text box of mysterious characters.
You'll notice that every time we put a new item in,
these characters change - so what do they mean?
Like, they're clearly not referring to the available enchantment, because the
next time you enchant something with Protection,
the characters can be completely different! And the next time, different again.
So are they random? Well... not completely.
Okay, so Minecraft has a set of words which can be written on the Enchanting Table
interface - and some of them get randomly appended together to form the string we see on screen.
Some of these are just random, like "xyzzy", "wgahnagl" and, uh... "baguette", but most of
them are words like "bless", "curse", "light", "darkness", and other sets of opposites.
What then happens is that these words go through an alphabet substitution cipher.
A cipher is an algorithm for encrypting data. When it comes to a string of text,
this is the simplest cipher there is, where the algorithm is simply...
You take the letter... and then you replace it. Do that for all the letters in the alphabet,
and you have your cipher alphabet! So, for instance,
this is Minecraft enchanting table for "u", this is "t", this is "b".
So that's that, then. Simple. Except there's a catch. This ISN'T "Minecraft
Enchanting Table". That's not where this cipher comes from.
See, this guy here is Markus "Notch" Persson, the original creator of
Minecraft. And if there's one thing I know he loves... it's being vaguely anti-semitic.
And if there's one more thing I know he loves, it's references to other games.
So it's not exactly surprising that this alphabet originates somewhere else entirely.
id Software is a video game company started by John Carmack, John Romero,
Tom Hall and Adrian Carmack. You might know them as the creators of the original Wolfenstein 3D,
which isn't actually the original Wolfenstein because that was a
stealth game created by MUSE Studios, but was arguably the original first person shooter.
In this game, you play as B.J. Blazkowicz, a Jewish-Polish-American spy killing Nazis. And
id Software also developed a series of games about killing hell demons - known as DOOM,
starring Blazkowicz's descendant as a protagonist - Doomguy.
Not kidding, that's the official name of the guy from DOOM - it's just "Doomguy",
no... no space, one word.
But in between these famous 3D shooter heroes, there's a lesser known space
marine in the family tree... called Billy Blaze, from the 2D Commander Keen series.
The first game, Invasion of the Vorticons, was released in 1990 for PC,
consisting of three chapters. Three further games released in 1991, with chapters 4,
5, 6, and 3.5 (I don't know don't ask me that's what the fanbase calls it).
For this game, designer Tom Hall created what he called the Standard Galactic Alphabet,
a set of 26 characters which substitute the Latin alphabet
in order to write messages in English, but still make them look more alien-y.
Now, to the conlangers out there, yes, this is the laziest form of linguistic worldbuilding
possible, I agree... but it's still a fun reference to be included in Minecraft!
It's also been added to the Under-Conscript Unicode Registry, which is a volunteer project
for encoding characters from constructed scripts to be put into a computer.
It also includes JRR Tolkien's Tengwar,
the script of the Elves, and the Klingon script from Star Trek.
And I think that's a weird bit of conscript and video game lore.
Anyway, I'm going to enjoy this highly protected armor in Minecraft now...
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