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In the beginning there was the word, and that word was Basic. But just how you approach writing the primary language of the galaxy far, far away, has been a fascinating topic of exploration in Star Wars from its start. The need to flesh out Star Wars into a wider universe after the original film exploded into popularity created a worldbuilding problem that would take decades to “solve”—and in doing so created a rich variety of writing systems to populate its galaxy.
Basic: The Language of Star Wars
Before you even get to how to even write it, you have to know what Basic (also known as Galactic Basic, or Galactic Basic Standard) represents in Star Wars. Although we as an English-speaking audience hear it as English—and of course Star Wars is a fictional universe created by English-language speakers—Basic itself is not meant to be a direct equivalent to spoken English.
Although we have seen that multiple languages exist across the Star Wars galaxy—Rodese, Shyriiwook, Huttese, Sith, Ghor, and so on—Basic is essentially a lingua franca, a common language adopted on a broad level by galactic society. But when we watch Star Wars, we are not really hearing Basic, but instead Basic’s translation into English, or whatever language you are watching a Star Wars project in: the Japanese dub of A New Hope is as canon to Star Wars as its English-language version is, even if there are subtle differences due to the nature of translation.
But that generalized view of Basic was not fully formed when Star Wars was created—not in its spoken form, as that didn’t really matter for the most part. Its written form, however, quickly became an issue.
The original Star Wars is covered with English signage and written words on displays, something that would change in the wake of the film’s blockbuster success. Both Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi would, with the confidence that audiences had accepted the galaxy far, far away, move away from putting English text on-screen, instead creating unique writing systems—reams of text that were not just left untranslated, but were never given meaning behind the symbology beyond the graphic design.
Enter Aurebesh
That would begin to change with the arrival of the Expanded Universe in the early 1990s and Aurebesh.
Aurebesh was developed in 1994 by Stephen Crane for a companion booklet to West End Games’ tabletop skirmish game Star Wars Miniatures Battles, a spinoff designed for miniatures originally intended to be used with the company’s highly influential Star Wars roleplaying game. Inspired by a font design glimpsed in the opening of Return of the Jedi, Aurebesh was fleshed out by Crane with Lucasfilm’s approval.
A 34-character alphabet, Aurebesh takes its name similarly to how “alphabet” itself is a portmanteau of the first two characters of the Greek alphabet, alpha and beta, instead borrowing the first two characters Crane established, Aurek and Besh. The writing system was further expanded upon by Crane in the 1996 supplement Imperial Entanglements, which added punctuation, and by that time, although other Expanded Universe works had attempted to establish their own non-Latin writing systems (such as Atrisian Script, most commonly seen throughout the LucasArts Star Wars games in the mid-’90s), Aurebesh quickly became widely adopted by EU material as the primary written word of Star Wars.
But the EU, as influential and popular as it was at the time, was not the movies—and Aurebesh would arguably really take off when it was first used on-screen in Star Wars in 1999, alongside other newly introduced typefaces, in The Phantom Menace. From there, Aurebesh as Crane had designed it would continue to appear throughout EU material and the prequel trilogy. In 2004, when the original Star Wars was re-released on DVD, one of several cosmetic tweaks included the official overwriting of what had previously been English text with correctly translated Aurebesh, effectively establishing the writing system as Basic’s official writing system, appearing heavily again in series like Clone Wars, and of course, after Star Wars‘ sale to Disney and the reshuffling of Star Wars canon.
Crane initially didn’t design a numerical system for Aurebesh, as the alien text seen in Return of the Jedi still utilized Arabic numerals—an alternate dot-based number system was actually created in 1995 for the West End Games RPG supplement Platt’s Starport Guide, and eventually found its way into Star Wars canon through the popularization of fan-made fonts shared online, namely Peter Schuster’s New Aurabesh, first released in 1998. The font, including its West End-inspired numerical system, would eventually be used in episodes of Clone Wars and Rebels, and appear alongside continued use of Arabic numerals in the Disney-era movies.
For as widely adopted as Aurebesh became, however, the system didn’t come without its faults. The Latin alphabet still occasionally appeared in Star Wars material alongside Aurebesh, meaning that it existed in the galaxy far, far away even if Aurebesh was significantly more widespread. That alphabet also inadvertently played a key part in Star Wars worldbuilding through ship design: namely, that alphabet fighters were all built around the adoption of the Latin alphabet before Aurebesh existed (they’re X-Wings, after all, not Xesh-Wings). Ship design, among other military designations, raised similar questions with other real-world alphabets too, in particular with the Greek alphabet, which was frequently adopted throughout the series, from Lambda-class Imperial shuttles, to Delta Squad, the stars of Republic Commando.
Further Writing Forms in Star Wars
Although Aurebesh and variations upon it have become the dominant written language of Star Wars today, there are hundreds of writing systems across the EU and contemporary canon to reflect hundreds more languages beyond just Galactic Basic. Here’s a few examples beyond Aurebesh that have existed across the original Expanded Universe and current continuity.
- Atrisian Script: As previously mentioned, this writing system, similar to Aurebesh, was inspired by the typeface seen in Return of the Jedi. First identified as such in a 1997 West End Games RPG journal, Atrisian Script was retroactively established as the primary typeface in Star Wars‘ ’90s gaming boom, appearing in Dark Forces, TIE Fighter, X-Wing, and more before the popularization of Aurebesh.
- High Galactic: High Galactic was codified as the explanation for why the Latin alphabet still existed alongside Aurebesh. First referred to as such in a 2010 Star Wars Hyperspace Fan Club article called The Written Word, High Galactic has since made its way into contemporary continuity, and was first identified as such in the 2015 novel Heir to the Jedi. High Galactic is considered rarer, and education in the usage of it was largely the pursuit of the upper classes, in comparison to the more widely adopted Aurebesh.
- Tionese: Similarly, Tionese (named for the Tion Cluster, a system of planets in the Outer Rim) was established by that same 2010 article as the in-universe equivalent to the Greek alphabet. In both the Expanded Universe and its far briefer existence in contemporary continuity, Tionese is considered an ancient writing system, still present but long since replaced by Aurebesh.
- Trade Federation Script: One of multiple writing systems introduced in The Phantom Menace alongside the first uses of Aurebesh on screen (including Futhark and Fothork, two different Naboo writing systems), this writing system was mostly used by first the Trade Federation, adapted from the Nemoidian writing system for their native tongue Pak Pak, and then broadly throughout the prequel era and Clone Wars as the Basic writing system adopted by the Separatist Confederacy.
- Sith/Ur-Kittat: Multiple Sith writing systems existed over the course of the Expanded Universe, some taking inspiration from hieroglyphs, others more runic systems. Sith as we know it today was largely developed by Ben Grossblatt for the 2010 reference book Book of Sith. The writing system established there would go on to be used in Star Wars Rebels, and appeared across multiple TV series before being prominently used as a plot point in The Rise of Skywalker.
- Mando’a: The language of the Mandalorians is one of the most fleshed-out constructed languages in Star Wars, with its primary spoken form fleshed out for the 2005 shooter Republic Commando and then by author Karen Traviss for her tie-in novel series. But written Mandalorian actually predates Mando’a’s broad development, first appearing as a typeface made for Attack of the Clones. This written form would then go on to appear throughout Clone Wars and Rebels‘ use of the Mandalorians, before returning to live-action use in The Mandalorian season two.
- Multiple writing systems have been introduced since the reboot of Star Wars canon. Protobesh and Domabesh, although named similarly to Aurebesh, were new writing systems created as graphic design for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, intended to be ancient writing systems established before Aurebesh. Ghor, developed significantly as a conlang for Andor‘s second season, also had not one, but two writing systems developed as part of that process: Dixian and Ghorelle, also known as Low and High Ghor, respectively.
One thing that has remained true about writing within Star Wars throughout the last almost 50 years is that its development is as driven by fans as it is creatives working in the galaxy far, far away. From the earliest days of the EU, it was not just ancillary material but the work of fans collating and developing font packs in the early days of Internet fandom who helped codify and standardize writing systems that would then work their way into other primary material like the prequels and TV shows like Clone Wars—a legacy that persists to this day, with resources like AurekFonts not just collating writing used in Star Wars, but designing typefaces that then in turn make their way into official material.
Wondering what reading and writing is like in the galaxy far, far away has long been the pursuit of Star Wars fans, so it’s really only fitting that they have played such a fundamental role in helping shape what we have come to know about it all across the years.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
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James Whitbrook
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