Monklish

Monklish (sometimes spelled Monkelish) is a writing system in the Bloons franchise that debuted in the Flash version of Bloons Monkey City. It is used most commonly to write hidden messages within Bloons games and promotional material. In Bloons TD 6, it is also a selectable "language" option that displays the game's English text in Monklish characters. Its name is a portmanteau of "monkey" and "English".

Structure and usage

Monklish letters are a cipher of the Latin alphabet as it is used in English, but with no letter casing. Monklish numbers and punctuation are identical to English, except for exclamation and question marks, which have unique symbols. As such, Monklish text is essentially equivalent to English and, capitalisation notwithstanding, text in one writing system can be transcribed to the other directly. However, most uses of Monklish in Bloons Monkey City and Bloons TD 6 appear to transcribe "th" digraphs as simply "T", such as "the" being transcribed as "TE" and "thorns" being transcribed as "TORNS". Some Monklish writing in Bloons TD 6 appears to be misspelled due to certain glyphs being very similar to each other, such as the Monklish characters for "D" and "U" being the inverse of each other.

As a language option

A language option for Monklish was added to Bloons TD 6 in version 33.0. It uses the same text as the English option, but it is displayed in a font that renders letters and exclamation/question marks in Monklish. Other punctuation marks and numbers are unaltered. Accented letters are rendered as their non-accented equivalents (e.g., Pouākai is rendered as "Pouakai").

List of uses

Bloons TD 6

Background elements

Image	Transcription	Notes
Adora's Temple	MAX SDN (horizontal) APEX DARK (vertical)	"MAX SDN" seems to be a misspelling of of "MAX SUN" due to the Monklish glyphs for "U" and "D" being the inverse of each other.
Bazaar	KL TEA CO (tea stall) CLOSED (building)
Midnight Mansion	STOP (upper hallway) NOWAY (stairs) NOMONKE (lower hallway)
Middle of the Road	END START (wooden sign) US (road sign) CHV (pickup truck)
Tinkerton	TO DO (whiteboard front) SOLVE (whiteboard back)

Promotional images

Image	Transcription	Notes
Promotional image for Race Events	EIGHTEEN ONE TREE[sic] FIVE	Presumably a misspelling of "three".

Other

Image	Transcription	Notes
Promotional image for Bloons TD Battles (mobile) v6.19	BAGGAGE CLAIM	—
"Choose a Path" icon in Bloons Card Storm	FAR NAER[sic]	Presumably a misspelling of "near" and "far".
Reinflated card art in Bloons Card Storm	REINFLATED	—
Surf Shack icon in Bloons Pop!	SEA	—
Spooky Cauldron icon in Bloons Pop!	AHU?	—