UPDATE!: There has been a bunch of new information about the Kittât alphabet and Sith Language since I made these charts. Previously this post contained a highly incomplete chart of a Sith alphabet that didn’t have a name yet. Now that the full alphabet and its name are official, I have updated the chart for that alphabet! It is definitely my favorite alphabet, so I’m very excited that the full thing is here now. Now if only the language was fully fleshed out so this alphabet could really be put to use… The information for that language below has also been updated!
[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.
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 already posted the first 8 (in alphabetical order) in the last post, now it’s time for the last 8.
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, which was in the first post, and Kittât, which doesn’t have a font). 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:
Mando’a: Mando’a is one of the most in-depth spoken languages that the Star Wars universe has (Click the Mando’a link above to see the entire language as it currently exists). Aside from the spoken language, there is also this written language. I’ve made the letters extra large to show off the tiny details in the letters (It’s probably good to note that the font seems to have had some errors with some of the letters, causing some of the shapes to look a little different (Specifically numbers 3 and 7). I’m not sure if that’s an issue with the way the font was designed or with Flash, the program I used to create these charts.) Because the characters have a lot of small nuances that relate more to line thickness than to the strokes, I haven’t yet figured out the best way to write this alphabet by hand. For instance, A and P would be hard to distinguish between if written by hand and E, J and I would also be hard to distinguish between.
Massassi: This was a very difficult font to find. I couldn’t find any instance of this written language anywhere on the internet except for the one single page that had this font for download (http://www.massassi.nl, the makers of the font). For some reason, the font displays strangely in Flash (looking closely, you can see white lines where the strokes of each character overlap). When I enlarged the font much larger, those white lines disappeared, but I had already made them pretty large. You’ll just have to try to ignore them, I guess…
Anyway, according to Wookieepedia, the Massassi glyphs did not always represent a single letter.
When it comes to Massassi and things related to sith purebloods, there are a lot of similarities intentionally made to ancient Egypt (which is awesome, considering I’ve always had an intense fascination with ancient Egypt).
Nal-Huttese: Nal-Huttese is another large spoken language that you can learn (Click the Nal-Huttese link to view the list of words). As for the written alphabet, Huttese comes in two flavors. Nal-Huttese is the main alphabet used to write Huttese. The other is Trade Huttese (which we’ll get to below).
Nal-Huttese is another alphabet that I think would be difficult to write by hand. It’s obviously a very calligraphic alphabet. It does look cool, but due to how difficult it’d be to write this alphabet in a recognizable way, it’s not one of my priorities to learn this alphabet, though I still plan to get to it eventually.
Teresian: Teresian is a written language based in glyphs. According to Tommy, the creator of this font, the characters were taken from the walls of an ancient sith temple called the Great Temple (also known as Massassi Temple) on Yavin 4, where the rebel forces made their base in A New Hope. Tommy also says that the Star Wars comic books call this glyph language Teresian. I have no idea what Teresian is or what species it is associated with, a Wookieepedia search and a Google search turn up zero results. Tommy also didn’t say which comic it’s from, so I couldn’t even attempt to look it up. That said, this temple was constructed by Massassi to worship the sith lord Naga Sadow, which means that if all of the above information is true, then this glyph set is another Massassi glyph language. I don’t know if that means that this is just more letters from the Massassi written language or if they had two different glyph languages or what…
The font itself is named SWyavin4. SW obviously stands for Star Wars and Yavin 4 is the location of this temple where the glyphs were found. Aside from all of this, these glyphs do not correspond to letters of an alphabet which means they are logographic and represent words and ideas instead.
I discovered these characters on the official Star Wars website. You can find them on their new feature, the Droid Viewer. All characters are cannon as far as I could decipher them. They are pretty small. I was not able to find an X yet, but I will update the file as soon as possible. I called it the Trade Federation Font, cause this interactive feature is called “Federation Droid Viewer”. I also noticed, that there are several characters that are the same as in the “Droids” font.
Please note that the font is missing the letter X and numbers 0, 7, 8 and 9. To create the chart above, I cut up other letters to create the missing characters using a complete chart found on Wookieepedia. I have no idea why this font hasn’t been updated to fill in the missing letters. Also note that I modified letters R, Y and Z to match the chart on Wookieepedia. The actual font for those 3 letters looks slightly different.
Trade Huttese: Trade Huttese is the second alphabet used to write Huttese. It is used primarily for trade with people from off world.
from a source sent by Mike Dolan from Star Wars Insider Magazine #35, Winter 1997. Article: “Making Special Edition Collectibles – A Talk with Designer Eric Larson”, pages 63-67. The single picture appears on page 65. Relevant quotes: “I created some boxes for Pizza Hut…I then created “Jabba’s Alphabet.” Years ago at a World con, I got to work for Howard Kazanjian, the producer of Jedi and Raiders. We had to put the frozen Han Solo and speeder bike together for the exhibit, and while doing so I noticed the writing on the props. I asked Howard what it was and he told me it was Hebrew, so when I designed Jabba’s alphabet I used a modern Hebrew font as a model.“ – from Designer Eric Larson. Mike Dolan and I feel than since nothing is made for StarWars without the OK of Lucas & Co., this is as canon as Trade Huttese will get.
Kittât: This alphabet is by far my favorite of all Star Wars alphabets. It doesn’t look anything like any real world alphabet I’ve ever seen (Look at my previous post at the Common Sith info to see how important that is to me, haha). I really like the way this alphabet looks and how it works. Something about it really reminds me of demonic sigils, which I think is extremely fitting for a written alphabet for ancient sith.
There are only two sources that I am aware of that feature Kittât at all. One of them is the Book of Sith, which has a spell called Dwomutsiqsa (Summon Demon) that is written in Kittât. I traced the letters from a scan of that image in order to get the most accurate possible letters for my chart. This spell can be seen on the Sith language page, which is full of lots of great information about the language. This spell only contains a small portion of the full Kittât alphabet.
The second source that features Kittât is from a brief 4 page article that was featured in Star Wars Insider Issue 134 called Speak Like A Sith, written by Kittât’s creator, Ben Grossblatt. The final page features an illustration showing the entire Kittât alphabet, which can be seen on the Kittât page, however it has a much sloppier style than is seen in the Dwomutsiqsa spell. This made it hard to discern the exact shape and size of a few of the letters (especially the letter for L or R and Z. The L or R letter is the only letter that doesn’t have a sharp bend at the bottom, which makes it hard to know where the bottom of it is and how far, if it all, the bottom curve extends below the baseline. Z is the only letter that extends above the top line. Like L/R, this makes it seem like I’m not interpreting it correctly, or that the sloppy writing style has made it appear to be shaped differently than it is supposed to be. It doesn’t help that several other letters differ a lot from how they look in the Dwomutsiqsa spell, like the bottom curve of any letter with Y in it, for example. For both the L/R letter and Z, it’s also hard to tell if the lines are meant to be curved or straight. Do they appear curved because it’s sloppy handwriting? Or do they appear straighter for that reason? All I can say is that I did my best to match the illustration.
The way this alphabet works is that all vowels are diacritics (a small mark added in or around another letter) that are placed at the top line or just under the hook of the previous consonant (if it has one on the top). You can see an example of this in the bottom right corner of the chart.
There are some important things to note about this alphabet. The first thing one might notice is that several English letters are missing. Unfortunately this alphabet just doesn’t have them, by design. Kittât’s creator, Ben Grossblatt, said the following in Speak Like A Sith:
I like to think creative Sith scribes would translate [Palpatine’s] name into their own language.
This means it will be very difficult to use this alphabet without learning the Sith language, which is difficult on its own due to there currently being such a limited vocabulary available. I’m dying to use this alphabet (and the Sith language) in day to day, casual settings, so I seriously hope the language gets fleshed out fully and very soon.
NOTE: This font was previously named Boonta after the festival it is seen in, but we renamed it Veknoid because Mike Dolan found out that the Boonta festival & Pod races seem to be inspired by the Veknoid aliens. The Veknoid [Boonta] symbols are visible on the Racing Pod of Teemto Pagalies (A furry, Bulldog-faced being) in the Incredible Cross-Sections Book. Teemto has been identified as a Veknoid, another species famous for having many members who are Podracers.
This font only has letters A-J, which makes it rather useless. It looks pretty cool, though.
[NOTE: I originally posted this on pillowfort but thought it might be interesting to folks here too]
This post is aimed at fic writers but it’s probably of use to anyone who has ever tried to look something up there. It might also be helpful for other Wikis but I don’t frequent those the way I do Wookieepedia, so I can’t verify. These are things that felt like it took me far too long to figure out. I welcome feedback to make it better.
Part 1 is about finding things on Wookieepedia when you aren’t sure what it’s called, aka browsing and using Categories. (this post)
Articles – These are the pages you are looking for. They’ve got pages on Aunt Beru and on Kathleen Kennedy, T-7 ion disruptors and “Destroy Malevolence”(the 4th episode of TCW). Basically everything.
Stubs – These are pages that are placeholders and haven’t been completely filled out. Still handy depending on how much is lacking, even if it’s only to let you know there’s not much.
Pages – Appear to be the same thing as an article or stub and I’m not honestly sure why they sometimes use this term and not articles. It should be noted that it is defined in part by what it is not which is a Category (see below).
Categories – A category is a way of grouping articles together. They can have subcategories creating a hierarchy. Every subcategory is technically a category as well. Categories are cool because when you aren’t sure what you are looking for they allow you to browse and hone in on your search. For example, Starships is a category whose subcategories include Starships by Affiliation and Starships by Type. In addition, Starships are a subcategory of Spacecraft which is a subcategory of Vehicles. Get the idea?
(There’s also Files – this is most often an image and accessed from an article. I won’t be discussing it much here)
There’s a load of screencaps so more below the cut.
For anyone who doesn’t yet know the ins and outs of Wookieepedia, be sure to check these posts out! Using all the functions of the wiki is a great way to sift through it and find what you want quickly!
FINALLY receiving some validation for my Catholic Boba Fett headcanon !
I…..
who wrote the book.
Daniel Keys Moran, it’s from a collection of stories called “Tales of the Bounty Hunters”
I am SO happy with Catholic Boba. I am SO pleased that Boba Fett is a PAPAL LOYALIST. Thank GOD (And the Pope) For this.
Okay, but can we just appreciate the fact that this scene is Boba being handed Leia in her slave outfit to rape as a gift from Jabba the Hutt, and Boba’s response is not only to refuse touching her but handing her a sheet to cover herself and even offering that she can sleep on the bed while he sits in a chair across the room?
Boba tells Leia, “Sex between those not married is immoral,” which is a Mandalorian cultural thing
because children are everything to Mandos and sex which might result in
pregnancy is a big no-no unless both parents are ready and willing to
raise that child; marriage to Mandalorians is two people making a mutual promise to help each other, particularly helping each other raise any children they might conceive or adopt (adoption happens a lot in the heat of the moment, apparently; it canonically appears to be a bigger risk than unplanned pregnancy – “whoops, honey, I accidentally adopted this kid I found on the battlefield” “oh. well. we knew that might happen having unprotected combat and all”).
It just says a lot about Boba, and Mandalorians in general, that they’re big buff armoured warrior types who apparently canonically have a very strong cultural bias for responsible sex. I mean, how many times do we see the fantasy/sci-fi warrior soldier stereotype = rape, or at the very least coercive sex, in pop culture? In so many movies and comics and novels, the female heroine/hero’s woman is captured by bad guys and offered as a “gift” to some big hunk of a warrior/gladiator/what have you who either does whatever he wants with her (explicitly on screen or implied off-screen by her ruined makeup and torn dress) to further the hero’s rescue-and/or-revenge-journey or maybe seduces her with his ~manliness~ and huge muscles/weapons even while there’s still that element of power imbalance as she surrenders helplessly to the ~instinctive urge~ to mate with the alpha male. Sex, or they-were-going-to-but-last-minute-interruption/rescue, is the inevitable outcome of a sci-fi/fantasy woman in a gold bikini being shoved into a soldier/warrior/gladiator dude’s quarters/cave/den/hovel.
And Leia is genre savvy and knows this. She fully expects Boba to rape her, and says as much. But his response to her threatening to kill him or kill herself if he touches her is just “woah there, lady, have we entered a culturally binding contract to conceive and raise children? no, we have not. so don’t flatter yourself thinking I’ll get my gametes anywhere near your uterus, thank you very much!” And Leia is a bit offended and wrong-footed, telling him “um, rape is immoral too, y’know,” but Boba just dismisses it all, “well, yes, rape is bad, but like it’s so far off the table here that it’s basically a non sequitur, why would I rape you when I don’t even want to have consensual sex with you, come on.”
I just love the fact that in Mando culture, consensual sex is EVERYTHING, it’s even CONTRACTUALISED. You know how all those MRA anti-feminists are all up in arms about movements like #MeToo and whining about how totally unreasonable it is to expect everyone involved to consent to sex, what, do femi-nazis want everyone to fill out consent forms before sex haha how ridiculous – and then we have Mandalorians, the most alpha of alpha people of all genders, all fake nerd boy incels’ epitome of badassness, literally contractualising consent. Boba Fett, pop-cult bad guy extraordinaire, not only refusing to rape Leia in her slave costume (unlike every single incel in the world who has masturbated to that scene of her on her knees in chains) but being genuinely offended at the thought of having sex with someone without pledging himself fully to her safety and welfare.
This short story was the moment I fell in love with the EU’s Boba Fett and Mandalorians in general. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
This is amazing, I had no idea of the context! Thank you for writing this!
One of the hardest parts about writing Star Wars fanfic (which is true of any story set against a massive stage) is working around travel times. SWTOR never really addresses the fact that it takes about 9 days to get from Tatooine to Alderaan (according to one source I have; 5 days according to another; 6-7 according to a third and oh my god could I just find consistent resources somewhere?!?), you just hop on your spaceship, hit the galaxy map and zoom, there you are and no one says anything like “Wow, took you long enough!” or “Gosh, you sure made good time!” So having an idea for something that occurs in Wild Space and would logically progress to Dromund Kaas means people are sitting on their heels for a loooong time while shit is going down.
I hate when I’m reading star wars fanfiction and all of a sudden someone says “fuck”
fuck doesnt exist in star wars! they dont say fuck in space!
Yeah. They say
K R I F F
let them say fuck
NO
Fuck that noise, sometimes you just need to let them say fuck.
Yeah, my simple response to this is…
Fuck
Fuck
Fuckity Fuck Fuck
kriff is a stupid-ass word and i fucking refuse to use it.
also I’d put good money on astronauts have indeed said “fuck”.
and they only don’t say it because PG rating.
so fuck that.
The only time I ever use “kriff” is if there’s another good expletive immediately following…such as “kriffing shit”. LOL.
I can’t imagine any of my characters or the NPC’s I write swearing in PG. Sorry, not-a-gonna-happen.
I write a lot of Lt. Pierce and basically write him as a Marine. We, uh … in this house we don’t swear in PG. xD
I’ll admit to using the occasional kriff but otherwise
Let them say fuck!
Yeah. At no point ever will anyone in my work say “i want to kriff you”.
N E V E R
I mix it up because 1. different languages/different dialects are gonna have different swear words and 2. sometimes I just forget and default to my natural state which is Fuck 24/7 and 3. sometimes kriff is funny. But never, no never, will I type “I want to kriff you.” That’s just ludicrous.
Yeah, I’ll toss “kriff” in the mix, usually as a modifier, for the purposes of swearing. But NEVER in a sexual situation.
Might as well be like “wow you’re moist” in terms of how immediate and visceral a turnoff it is.
I have some characters who will say or think “kriff” because I recognize that it is a part of the Star Wars universe canon, but man, “fuck” gets used a LOT in my fics. Like, a lot a lot.
I’ve had this post saved up for days, waiting to release it when I ran out of other posts, because this is easily the greatest thing I have ever voiced, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to top it
please do keep sending me stuff! I’ve really enjoyed doing this the last couple of months, and even though there’s still more to come, it’s mostly down to dumb luck, and the well is going to dry up real soon
This person made the sounds to my comic Obi Survive and it’s the best thing ever. Lightsaber noises included!! Thank you so much!
the fact that you saw this after all this time makes me day!!!
Today in things I have already researched:
– what year did Arcann and Thexan attack Korriban? (3637 BBY, about a year after Revan’s death and a short while after the Invasion of Ziost – not a lot of wiggle room to set a story between Ziost and KotFE, but here goes nothing)
– what colour is Chiss blood? (red, according to Wookiiepedia; if anyone can confirm or correct that I’d greatly appreciate it, ‘cause it’s gonna come up)
– do the Chiss have any oaths or sayings, similar to “by the Force!” or “stars!”? (bless Star Wars RPG … not sure of the accuracy here, however …)
– how do I write a firearms aficionado when I know fuck-all about guns? specifically sniper rifles?
New Year Fete Week = first five days of the new year (takes place before the first month)
Festival of Life = five days between the sixth and seventh months. It was marked by parties, get-togethers, and gift-giving.
Festival of Stars =five days between the ninth and tenth months of the year that celebrates interstellar space travel. It was marked by vacations to other worlds most often.
Days of the Week
Primeday (first day of the week)
Centaxday (second day)
Taungsday (third day)
Zhellday (fourth day)
Benduday (fifth/last day of the week)
The Galactic Standard Calendar is based on the
luno-solar calendar of Coruscant (from before the official founding of the Empire). It is the ‘standard’ in both the Republic and the Empire for basic measurements. However, there are many, many variations for various species, planets, etc. This is just the ‘standard’ used; similar to measurements of weight, etc.
Basically, this is not the ‘only calendar’ but the one used most often by governments, the military, etc. to be the ‘standard’. I thought it might be useful for people writing or roleplaying in the Star Wars galaxies to have a rough idea.
NOTE: There is mention in some sources of a 12 month/368 day calendar, but it doesn’t mention length of weeks, months, etc. other than ‘30-31 days’ so basically seems to be a ‘real life calendar’. I’m not 100% sure which is considered ‘canon’ so I choose to list the one that was a bit more ‘different’ for fun.
Crumpet's Bookshelf 