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drsunshines · 7 days ago

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[EDIT]This post has been getting reblogged a ton lately, but without any of the text, which is a shame because I spent a lot of time typing it. Even more of a shame, the second post has been completely ignored. So because I took so much time making these charts and typing this text, I think I should add a link here to the other post, even though none of you will even see it.

Post 2 with the last 8 languages: http://lucif-hare.tumblr.com/post/17141980690/for-people-who-dont-like-to-scroll-to-find[/EDIT]

For people who don’t like to scroll to find valuables, here is a link to download all of the Star Wars fonts I’ve found: http://freak-show.zxq.net/Star%20Wars%20Fonts.zip (Note: This is a zip file. You will need to unzip it.)

To install a font: In Windows 7, open the font and there should be a button at the top that says “Install.” Click that and you’re done. In other versions of Windows, copy and paste ONLY the font file into the font folder on your computer (It should be located in something like C:/Windows/Fonts)

About these charts:

For whatever reason, I have a fascination with in-world Star Wars languages. I’ve spent countless hours searching the internet for different languages, namely for the written alphabets. What I’ve found is that, even for the languages that exist, it’s extremely hard to find charts or fonts for the written languages. Aurebesh is obviously easy to find, but the others, not so much.

Because it’s so hard to find charts, I decided to make my own. It took far longer than I expected it to, but I’m finally done.

I’ve managed to find 16 languages. I’ll post the first 8 (in alphabetical order) in this post and the last 8 in another post.

I’ve also gathered together all the Star Wars fonts I’ve found, including the fonts for each of the alphabets above (except for Geonosian and Kittât, which don’t have fonts). A link to a zip folder with all of the languages can be found above. I should note that there are a lot of other Star Wars fonts out there, I was only looking for fonts for in-world languages. I just happened to have picked up some other English ones along the way.

About the languages:

Atrisian: Atrisian is a language that comes from the planet Atrisia. Behind the scenes, it is an alphabet that was used in Star Wars games several times before Aurebesh was finalized. This font was created by Erikstormtrooper, who mapped the 12 characters seen in the games to the 12 most common letters in the English alphabet. He made up the rest of the letters. He named the font Dark Katarn after the game Star Wars: Dark Forces and the main character from the game, Kyle Katarn. There is much more information about where this alphabet comes from here. The language, however is officially called Atrisian, according to Wookieepedia.

Aurebesh: Aurebesh is the language of the Star Wars universe. If you’re looking at an official Star Wars item from like the last 10 years, chances are there is Aurebesh printed on it somewhere. Aurebesh is an alphabet that was based on low-quality screen shots of monitor screens from the original Star Wars movies. At some point, someone stumbled across the original font used for those screens in the archives and revealed them to the world. It turns out the original letters differ a bit from Aurebesh, but it’s still pretty close. A font that more accurately matches the original screens (which is not included in my .zip above) and more information about the original Aurebesh can be found here. In-world, Galactic Basic is the language spoken by most of the galaxy. Galactic basic is just English (or whatever the native language is of the viewer). The written form of Galactic Basic is Aurebesh (Aurebesh means alphabet. Aure is the name of the letter A in Galactic Basic and Besh is the name of the letter B in Galactic Basic).

One note about the numbers in Aurebesh: Most Aurebesh fonts use the number design used in the above chart, with vertical lines and dots. However, there is only one instance that I’ve ever seen in an official source where this number design has been used (It was on a close up shot of credit ingots from the Star Wars: Clone Wars CG animated series) Everywhere else, a slightly modified version of the English numbers is used. I’m not sure why this is, and I also haven’t come across a font that has that same number design. This image shows the two number designs. The “alien” numbers on top and the “Arabic” numerals normally seen in official Star Wars items on bottom.

Contained in the font .zip download are several different Aurebesh fonts made by various different people (Credits for who made what are inside). Among the fonts is a narrow version and a version that looks hand-written.

Common Sith: There are 6 different versions of Darth Vader’s chest box, each uses different characters from this language. These 6 boxes are the only instances I’ve ever seen that use this language. For some reason, it was decided that these letters should be the Common Sith language. There is a very detailed explanation of where this alphabet came from here.

I’ve thought about it quite a bit and this just doesn’t seem at all likely or logical to me. Darth Vader was the last sith in a very long line of sith existence (Yes, I know the sith came back after Palpatine died, but for at least a short time, the sith stopped existing) It seems unlikely that only the very last sith to exist would have used this language and not the thousands who came before him. Aside from that, Palpatine and Vader were the only Sith left in the universe. The only reason you write in a particular language rather than another is so that a particular person or group of persons can read it. You choose the language most easily read by the people whom you want to be reading it. If there’s only one other person in the galaxy who knows how to read this language, it doesn’t seem logical at all to bother using that language. With Aurebesh being the primary language in the galaxy, it stands to reason that Vader would have used that. Or at the very least a more common alphabet than one only the two of them knew how to read. Which brings me to my next point. It could be understandable if the text was used to hide valuable information that Vader wanted only sith to know. But it’s his fucking chest box. It’s a medical component, a part of his life-support system. For one, you don’t put secret information on your chest, even if it isn’t legible to anyone. And for another, you don’t label medical components with secret code. If you have a medical emergency, you want your doctor to be able to read what the the fuck your life-support system says. Which brings me to another point. It’s a medical device. Vader probably didn’t make it himself (Maybe he built a newer version later on, but not the original one) why would the medical engineers that made this device have labeled shit in the sith alphabet? How would they have even known the sith alphabet? It’s unlikely that they would have.

For all of these reasons, it seems really unlikely and illogical to me that the text on Vader’s chest box would be a sith alphabet. If it was a sith alphabet, it’d have been seen all over the place, written by all the countless other sith that existed before Vader. But it hasn’t appeared anywhere else.

I maintain that this font is not a sith alphabet. But it is canon at this point, so there’s not much I can do about it.

Having said all of this, the real reason I don’t like this font are two fold: 1.) Several of the characters are very similar and when writing it on paper, unless you write the letters perfectly (and my handwriting sucks), it can be difficult to determine which letter you’ve written (I know, I’ve already done this.) 2.) The biggest thing about this alphabet that bothers me is that it is not original. The letters in this alphabet are literally just Hebrew letters. And that bothers me. I like my fictional alphabets to be fictional. This is the main reason I reject this alphabet. I love the sith and I want an original, unique language to be paired up with them. That’s why I’m thrilled about Kittât, which you’ll see in my next post.

Droid: I don’t really know where this font comes from, I can’t seem to find any information on it except the brief blurb about it next to the font download on one particular site. It uses symbols very similar (and sometimes the same as) the Trade Federation alphabet, but it isn’t exactly the same.

The blurb from this website says this:

The Droid font comes from the Star Warsr movie “The Phantom Menace"r and the book StarWars Episode 1 Visual Dictionary. The info for this font comes from Scott Watson. This is the Galactic Basic numerals used to identify Droids. The font is canon 0 thru 9 and A thru J. The rest of the font was invented by Mike, if more info is forthcoming he will update the font.

Ewokese: Aside from having a spoken language that you can learn (Click the link above to view the list of words from the language), Ewokese also has this glyph writing system. The symbols represent words and ideas and are not used to spell words like normal letters are. The symbols are also written vertically, not horizontally.

Futhark: Futhark is the formal written language used on Naboo.It was not often used because it was found hard to read by common folk, according to Wookieepedia. I’m not sure why, but I’ve never cared for Naboo and this happens to be my least favorite of the Star Wars alphabets.

Futhork: Futhork is the informal version of Naboo’s written language. I.. guess there isn’t much more to say about it than that…

Geonosian: Geonosian is a language that was created by Philip Metschan, along with two other alphabets, for George Lucas. Philip incorporated this alphabet in several of the Death Star technical readouts in Episode 2. As far as I know, this alphabet has not been released as a font publicly. For the chart above, I photoshopped the characters out of the image (which you can see by clicking the "Geonosian” link above) from Philip’s portfolio (which you can find by clicking his name above). Because I am not a typographer and do not have the means to make my own fonts, this font is not in the .zip folder. It’s a shame because I think this font looks pretty cool.

And that wraps up the first of this two part Star Wars/language nerdgasm of posts I’m making.

…Wow, I’m such a nerd…

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