Aurebesh
From Wookieepedia, the Star Wars wiki.
Aurebesh was a writing system commonly used to represent the Basic language. The name comes from a combination of the first two letters, Aurek and Besh.
Aurebesh implemented consonants, vowels, digraphs, and punctuation marks. Words were separated by spaces. Aurebesh could be written mainly left-to-right or up-to-down. All letters are the same relative size, although occasionally symbols were mirror-inverted to denote capital letters. The symbol for the Republic Credit was a Resh (R for Republic) with two vertical lines through the upper half of the symbol. Letters of the alphabet were also used to denote musical keys, such as the key of Cresh.
The origins, as well as the time it was implemented are not known. It existed at least as early as the Jedi Civil War and afterwards.
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[edit] Prominent examples
- During The Phantom Menace, when Anakin Skywalker is flying an N-1 Starfighter in the Battle of Naboo, a screen reads "Anakin, turn the ship around and go back home right away." This is presumably a message to Anakin from R2-D2. It occurs just before Anakin's line, "Go back? Qui-Gon told me to stay in this cockpit, so that's what I'm going to do."
- In the 2004 DVD release of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, the words displaying information as Obi-Wan Kenobi deactivates the tractor beam on the Death Star I, which were written using the Roman alphabet in previous releases, are now in the Aurebesh. Note that this particular instance was the only scene in the whole series to clearly show Roman letters (though highly observant viewers note that a needle on an IT-0 interrogation droid in an earlier scene is marked "British Made").
- In Return of the Jedi, Aurebesh is seen on the monitors of the Death Star II control center, when Darth Vader's shuttle is about to land. These graphics predate the West End Games description of Aurebesh, and produce gibberish if those letter assignments are used.
- In a few instances, such as Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith, inscriptions appear mirror-inverted to denote capital letters.
- In the main screen menus of Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, Star Wars Battlefront II, and Star Wars: Republic Commando Aurebesh is shown.
- In Star Wars: Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, Kyle Katarn enters the three-letter communication code for Rogue Squadron in Aurebesh into the Doomgiver communication system. The code spells out "THX", an allusion to George Lucas's movie THX 1138, as well as to his sound-system company THX.
- On the menu of the PC version of Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy it is seen scrolling in the background, and when you move the mouse over the choices they turn to Roman.
- In the mission briefings of Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds, Aurebesh text accompanies the depicted elements on screen. Although translatable, they do not equate to meaningful thoughts, instead. Some players have tried to read them and find funny messages.
- In Attack of the Clones, Aurebesh can be seen on the walls of the buildings of Coruscant as Jango Fett flies away after killing Zam Wesell. One of the walls can be translated as saying "Warren".
- In Star Wars: Galaxies, all text that appears as part of the game world—on screens, signs, displays, plaques, posters, and labels—is written in Aurebesh and makes sense when transliterated to English.
- In Star Wars Republic 49: Sacrifice in the first panel showing Aayla Secura on The Wheel is a neon sign that contains the text "TOSHE STAT[page ends]" and below that the word "KIFFEX."
- "VOS" appears in Aurebesh on Quinlan Vos's chest.
- In Star Wars: Bounty Hunter, Aurebesh appears in the menu.
- In Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, and Star Wars: Empire at War the Aurebesh symbol for $ appears above the total amount of credits.
- In the beginning of the Star Wars: Empire at War scenarios, where the player chooses sides, an Aurebesh text advertising Petroglyph occupies most of the screen.
- In the Rhen Var citadel level from Star Wars: Battlefront, there is a secret message written on the wall, next to the stairs at the observatory. It says "Rhen Var Is Cold." However, the "E" and the "N" in "Rhen" is switched with each other. It is also on a high part of the outside of the observatory.
- Some objects in Star Wars: Droidworks (for example, a water tank) are labeled in Aurebesh.
- On the sides of Eta-2 Actis-class Jedi interceptors, Aurebesh text can be seen. Anakin's Jedi Interceptor contains the text "Elbert Maria." It is unknown what significance this name has.
- When the website for the new Wizards of the Coast Star Wars Roleplaying Game first went online, it featured a couple of lines of Aurebesh as decoration. One of these lines could be translated to "FUCK YOU", and was removed as soon as Wizards was notified of this.
- In The New Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels, The New Essential Guide to Weapons and Technology, and The New Essential Guide to Droids, the names of all the things described are in Aurebesh on the opposite page from the picture of that item.
- In Attack of the Clones, the droid waitress in Dex's Diner has a nameplate that translates to "Flo".
- In Star Wars: Demolition, an energy absorbtion bonus is in the form of a floating yellow Aurek; a deflector shield bonus in the form of a floating bluish Besh; and a cloaking shield bonus in the form of a floating hot pink Krill.
- In The Revenge of the Sith video game, the movie titles on the movies menu are in Aurebesh, then they change to Roman letters as you scroll over them.
- In the Risk: Star Wars Clone Wars Edition board game, the planet and region names are listed in Aurebesh underneath the Roman names.
- In the 2008 film Fanboys the word "fanboys" is written in mirrored Aurebesh on the doors of the van.
[edit] Behind the scenes
[edit] Evolution
The Aurebesh-like writing that appears in the original trilogy is totally random and it is believed that the filmmakers did not intend to put any meaningful text. The assignment of the letters to some English equivalent was first developed by Stephen Crane at West End Games in the Star Wars Miniatures Battles Companion (1994), for use with the Star Wars Miniatures Battles game and Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game. The Aurebesh was later expanded to include punctuation marks in the Star Wars Miniatures Battles supplement, Imperial Entanglements (1996).
This original Aurebesh is occasionally used in electronic and board games such as Star Wars Monopoly. Since the letters in the movies are random, the assignment of the West End Games-values to the inscriptions of the movies, produces nonsensical results–most words seen in the movies appear to consist solely of consonants, and some letters appear on screen that are absent from the West End Games Aurebesh.
In the prequel trilogy and in Special Edition releases of the original trilogy, the inscriptions use the West End Games mapping, and can be transcribed to English.
[edit] Origination
Many of the Phoenician Alphabet letter names were probably used for inspiration (or just used) for the Aurebesh letter names. E.g. Beth, Daleth, etc. provided one style of constinents while and letters like Resh provided whole letter names. Also some symbols bear resemblance to the Phoenician symbols i.e. Gimel, Daledh, Waw and Lamedh.
The word "Aurebesh" was developed in a manner similar to the word Alphabet, which is derived from the first two letters of the Phoenician/Greek alphabet (Alpha and Beta).
[edit] Aurebesh and Roman
There are some slight indications that the Galaxy also used the Roman alphabet (in the way that Basic is English) along with Aurebesh. This is seen in some in-universe inscriptions (Jedi Code) or emblems, like that of the Jedi Order. The text seen on viewscreens in The Star Wars Holiday Special is in Roman, rather than Aurebesh, due to the fact that Aurebesh had yet to be invented at the time in the real world. Aurebesh was introduced later in The Empire Strikes Back (when R2D2's conversation with Luke Skywalker in the X-Wing n the way to Dagobah is translated on the ship's dashboard readout).
While we can say that these instances are 'translations' for the Earth readers, some instances show both Roman and Aurebesh (Corporate Sector Authority). It is not known if those appearances should be considered mistakes, artistic license and/or non-canonical. Additionally, the use of characters from the Roman alphabet to describe various starfighters based on their shapes (X-wing, Y-wing, A-wing, etc.) would seem to indicate that the Roman alphabet exists in-universe, as the shapes of these craft do not match the shapes of the corresponding letters in Aurebesh but do in the Roman alphabet.
In-universe sources show Arabic numbers, however one of the fan-made fonts presents a numerical system based on dots and lines.
It should be noted that in many instances, the sounds "ch", "sh", and "th" are written using Aurebesh exactly as they would be in English (cresh-herf, senth-herf, and trill-herf, respectively), despite that separate letters exist in Aurebesh for those sounds (cherek, shen, and thesh, respectively). (To see an example of this, examine the text in the picture in the upper right of this page.) While it is possible that these instances represent legitimate in-universe variations of the sound-values for the letters in question, it is more likely that they represent errors on the part of the real-world transliterators (who are—understandably—more used to employing digraphs than employing single letters to write these sounds).
[edit] Appearances
- Specter of the Past
- Star Wars Adventure Journal 10
- Star Wars Legacy 3: Broken, Part 3
- Star Wars Galaxies
- Star Wars: Trivial Pursuit DVD Edition
- Star Wars Monopoly: Saga edition
[edit] Fonts
Note: none of the available fonts use reverse glyphs for capital letters.
Aurabesh (TrueType) Created by Mike E. Webb on February 10, 1996. As only the alphabet had been described, Webb based his punctuation on work by Eric Kristiansen (aka Jackill), and invented glyphs for other common symbols. He also made the lowercase letters small versions of the capitals.
AurebeshAlternate (TrueType) Created by David Occhino on September 8, 1997. Occhino updated the punctuation to match West End Games, removed the non-canon symbols (except for the Arabic numerals), and made the lower case letters the same size as the capitals. He also changed the assignments of the digraphs, so it is not backwards compatible with Webb's font.
newAurabesh (TrueType) Created by Peter Schuster on June 21, 1998. Schuster also updated the punctuation to match West End Games, removed the non-canon symbols, and made the lower case letters the same size as the capitals. He changed the numbers to match Technical Readouts, and changed the assignments of the digraphs, so it is not backwards compatible with either Webb's or Occhino's fonts.
Aurek-Besh (TrueType, standard, narrow, and hand-written) Created by Davide Canavero (aka Boba Fonts) on March 7, 1999. Canavero made small improvements to the rendering of many of the symbols, enlarged the numbers for clarity, and added more logical assignments for the digraphs while also keeping Schuster's assignments. As a result, Aurek-Besh is backwards compatible with newAurabesh.
[edit] Sources
- Star Wars Gamemaster Screen (1992)
- Stephen Crane
- Star Wars Miniatures Battles Companion (1994) – Alphabet
- SWMB: Imperial Entanglements (1996) – Punctuation
- Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith (1998) – Reverse glyphs for capitals
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Tommy of Escondido's Alien Fonts – Other SF Fonts includes:
- Aurabesh (1996) by Mike Webb
- AurabeshAlternate (1997) by David Occhino (via a link)
- NewAurabesh (1998) by Peter Schuster
- Aurek-Besh (1999) by Davide Canavero
- Aurek-Besh Hand (1999)
- Aurek-Besh Narrow (1999)
