The history of Cybertron is dominated by three languages: Autobot, Kaonic and Legion. Two of these languages are now near-dead, overwhelmed and replaced by the youngest language of Cybertron: Decepticon.

Modern Autobot is now the most widely-spoke language amongst Cybertronians, followed by Modern Decepticon. Modern Murion survives with the Kaon Contract troops amongst the Autobot army, and it has given many an Autobot a sharp shock to hear comrades he thought of as fellow Autobots talking in a foreign language.

The earliest recorded language of Cybertron is Buildertongue. This language is variously believed to have been the native language of all Cybertronians prior to the First War [gifted to Cybertronians by the Builders or Vector Sigma or both] or the language of an invading alien race who wiped out all traces of Cybertron's native languages. According to the latter, Primordialist theory the original language or languages of Cybertron are known as Ancient Cybertronian.

During the revolution leading to the First War the Cybertronians attempted to divest themselves of as much Builder culture as possible, including the only language they had. This led to the deliberate and studied creation of Primaltongue.

As was intended Primaltongue diverged rapidly and before the First War had ended had separated into into three distinct language families: Ancient Autobot, Ancient Murion and Ancient Legion.

It is in the range of sounds that Cybertronians can make that the true complexity of Primaltongue and its offshoots lie. Each trisound, as written here in the modern English alphabet, represents a tritonal noise. Each trisound is comprised of, as the name implies, three parts:

• The 'buzz'. A high-frequency sound separate from the drone or click. The buzz is a complex sound and the part of the trisound that carries the inflection. To human ears it ranges from a gnat-like whining to a horrible, cat-like screech. Thus the cries of a highly emotional Cybertronian are utterly horrible to humans.
• The 'drone' or 'click'. In a short trisound, such as those of the click or voiced sound families, this is short, definite sound, the most easily registered by the human ear. In a long trisound such those of the drone or squeal families this sound can be modulated to contain up to three shifts in pitch.
• The 'tone'. A low monotone or duotone that reinforces the shape of the drone or click. The tone part of a trisound can reach infrasound frequencies.

Modern Autobot is, to human ears, a selection of electronic clicks, tones and beeps. It has been variously likened to the dial train of a modem heard over a very bad phone line, three computers all trying to imitate the same bird-song in different keys, and a fight between Jean Michel Jarre and Mike Oldfield as replayed on a Moog synthesizer with half the keys broken off.

Modern Decepticon is, to human ears, just about distinguishable from Modern Autobot if the listener is reasonably experienced. Modern Decepticon is much harsher-sounded and makes a wide use of hard stops, sudden changes of tone, modulated growls and hisses, and does not use the softer chirping sounds that make Autobot language easier on the human ear. Modern Decepticon has been variously described as sounding like six rattlesnakes trapped in a vacuum cleaner, a cat going through a Vax tape drive tail-first, or an industrial remix of "The Best Of Stuka Sirens" as done by someone deaf in one and a half ears.

A major dialect of Modern Decepticon is Seeker, a dialect developed for shouting at high altitude over the sound of jet engines. The Seeker dialect uses a lot of sounds in the higher registers, and also uses a lot of onomatopoeia. To human ears, it is an appalling, incoherent screeching, shrieking and screaming interspersed with deep booming, clicking, growls and hard stops.

In transliterating Cybertronian into English only an approximation of the sounds made is possible: writing it as sheet music would be easier. Thus some Cybertronian words may appear that contain sounds not listed in the trisound index. This is because the interaction of sounds in the trisound produce what the human ear recognizes as a single sound. The main words - i.e. the concept-roots - have set tones, clatters and chirps; modifiers and tones of voice are expressed using whistles, clicks, beeps and squeals. This compression allows a great deal to be said very quickly. For example, an Autobot term for a rust storm is chan bat, but the Autobot trisound index contains no "ch" sound. This is because chan bat is spelt as sun pato in Autobot, but the way the trisounds are pronounced means that chan bat is the most accurate representation of the sounds spoken that can be made with the English alphabet. Were a human to say the words "chan bat" to an Autobot, the Autobot would not understand that the human meant "rust storm" because the human vocal apparatus cannot produce the Cybertronian sounds transliterated here as chan bat.

It should also be remembered that whilst a sound may not be listed in a language's trisound index, this does not mean a Cybertronian cannot pronounce it. The Decepticon language contains no native "w" sound but this does not mean that a Decepticon cannot say "Wednesday", only that the sound has no meaning or place in the Decepticon language. The most obvious case of this is in that of Flamefeather, the Decepticon Firecon. The Autobot language contains neither the sound "f" nor the sound "th", yet any Autobot can easily say "Flamefeather". 

Where Cybertronian words are transliterated here, apostrophes are used to two purposes. In the Decepticon trisound tu'ut, to indicate a break in the sound, differentiating it from the similar Decepticon trisound tuut. The former is pronounced more like "tu ut" where the latter is pronounced more like "toot". Similarly, the word Oo'oi is pronounced as "oo-oy", not "ooo-ee" as Oooi would be. In the Autobot language, apostrophes represent hidden sounds. For example, the name R'raun is a shortened form of the name Riomoraun.

Hyphens are used in transliterated Cybertronian words to indicated that, although pronounced as if two words, the two sounds are part of the same word. For example, the Decepticon word zaur-shrea ["star scream"] is one whole word [zaurshrea] and not two words [zaur shrea] even though it is pronounced as the latter.

See also: Transliteration