#high galactic

Handwriting.

Listen, I know what Tengwar looks like when it’s well written, but what does a grocery list from a harried mother look like in Tengwar??

What does the hurried scrawl of an 8 year-old Vulcan child look like, in the 22nd century specifically because WOAH that’s cool??

In Star Wars’ Galactic Standard, you have the questionably canon High Galactic, Aurebesh and Outer Rim Basic.

Much to my delight it seems Convallarias made a cool calligraphy version of Aurebesh that I love the look of:

Star Wars Pangram #4

"Judge me by my size?” Yoda inquired of his vexed apprentice, Luke Skywalker.

But, like, if there were upper-case and lower-case forms I would be screaming complaints about having to learn two different versions of the same alphabet? (Like we have in English. Haha...)

If you think about it, Aurebesh is clearly type-fitted for electronic use. ‘Aurek’ and ‘besh’ have way too many angles for them to have been designed for actual hand-written purposes. (I round out the angles on those letters when I’m writing things down via pen, okay? The letters ‘grek’ ‘peth’ and ‘usk’ get the same treatment.) Also: They’re all. The same. Exact. Height. You know what else does that? CAPITAL LETTERS

I’m on my second day of practicing Aurebesh and my new Star Wars-universe headcanon is that Aurebesh is only the prevalent Basic alphabet because, really, when people want to write they type things down. Flimsiplast is tedious to carry and store, but if one insists, then it’s easier to use the High Galactic alphabet instead. I’d bet that you might find one in fifty people who can write Aurebesh as well as read it. (That would actually make a really fun rl poll. How many fans can recognize/read Aurebesh but have never bothered to write with it?)

Then there are the eight extra letters. (???) Like, what do I do with them? ‘Shen’ is supposed to replace ‘sh’ - but is that only for the letter combination or do you do it for the sound? I don’t think you’re supposed to use ‘shen’ to replace the ‘sh’ sound in, say, connection. (Why not? W H Y) How does that makes sense? I don’t understand.

We have ‘nen’ which is supposed to replace the letter combination ‘ng’. Once again: do we focus purely on the letter combination or the sound?? Am I supposed to replace every ‘-isk-nern-grek’ (-ing) with ‘-isk-nen’ ? IPA represents the ‘ng’ sound with ‘ŋ‘ which is used in words like sing. But then you have the same sound in words like link. (Leth-isk-nern-krill or lenth-isk-nen-krill?)

Can we talk about ‘orenth’? It’s a stand-in for ‘oo’ which is great. I’m all for coming up with substitutes for double letters - but where are the rest? How come there’s no substitute for any of the common double consonants? Or if you’re not going to do consonants, why not choose a new symbol for repeating vowel sets? Let’s get symbols for ‘ee’ and ‘aa’. That way we can write Shaak Ti’s first name in three characters instead of five. (Woudn’t that be neat?)

On the plus side there’s a symbol for ‘th’. No, it’s not theta, it’s ‘thesh’ (trill-herf-esk-senth-herf or thesh-esk-shen?) ((At this point does it matter?))

I just need a clear-cut set of rules to follow here. For grammar purposes. I’m sure @carmenavocado would agree.

Seems like, yes, they are a form of English. Written out, not so much. But spoken, yes. Although due to characters being voiced by people from Earth, this is biased and relies on using certain accents (Upper class British mainly for Coruscanti, inclusive of Scottish, i.e. Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon).

So I may have to change some lines in that last ficlet I did for the Star Wars AU, even if I do find it odd. I suppose it might be possible for such forms of alphabet to have devolved and then re-evolved back into t he same shape, as unlikely as it may seem.

I mean, I understand that in real life, it's all because they couldn't keep Roman, Greek etc. language references out, but in this particular post, I'm looking for an in-universe reason.