charlesnarles Posted November 22, 2015 Report Share Posted November 22, 2015 (edited) I've been trying to become fluent in Aurebesh, but I'm coming across some issues that seem to have been overlooked. Mainly, the Greek alphabet we use for English has nothing to do with their sounds, so it's a logical fallacy to literally transpose the 26 letters (34 with digraphs). One must use the International Phonetic Alphabet to "spell with sounds" in the way that language works, so there must be (Aurebesh) characters for every sound, rather than for every (Greek) letter (which have several "correct" pronunciations). For example, would the "o" in the word "dog" would be spelled with an Aurek or with an Osk? This could explain different pronunciations of Han's name ("lawn" vs "pan"). But what really troubles me is the lack of a strong "ee" digraph (SE trilogy spells "tractor beam" using transposed letters) so how would one spell "TatooINE" without a character representing that sound? T-a-t-oo-y-n ("y" = "ee")? Not "...i-n-e" because that's pronounced "eye-neh" considering "Jedi." WDW simply transposed its spelling as well, without even utilizing Orenth ("oo") which is technically inaccurate based on its own rules. I know the short answer is "it's a movie..." but I want the long answer to be contemplated! There must be ONE linguist who likes SW enough to make it universally applicable to any fan's language, not just those represented with the Greek Alphabet.<br> Here's a link to the IPA that speaks its pronunciations:<br> <a data-ipb='nomediaparse' href='http://www.internationalphoneticalphabet.org/ipa-sounds/ipa-chart-with-sounds/'>http://www.internationalphoneticalphabet.org/ipa-sounds/ipa-chart-with-sounds/</a> Edited November 22, 2015 by charlesnarles Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CommanderZel Posted November 22, 2015 Report Share Posted November 22, 2015 As an actor I've got a good deal of experience with the IPA, but I haven't ever seen (heard?) anyone "speaking" Aurebesh. My understanding was that it's only an alphabet and that it exactly mirrors the *Latin alphabet in terms of character values. I've never seen it assigned phonetic values. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jannick Posted November 22, 2015 Report Share Posted November 22, 2015 they are not sounds. They're names. It's like the International Radiotelephony Spelling Alphabet. You know, Alfa, Charlie, Foxtrot etc.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charlesnarles Posted November 22, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 22, 2015 [Thanks for the replies!]<br> They speak English in the films; I was under the impression that Standard Galactic Basic = American English ("aluminum"), where High Galactic = British English ("aluminium"). If Arebesh mimics the Latin alphabet [thank you for the correction!], then where are all the pronunciation indicators? Theoretically then there'd be several possible spellings of words ("dog" vs "dawg"). And Radiotelephony is even further away from a real language, since we say "delta wing," not "duh wing," and also don't pronounce "dog" as "delta-oscar-golf," right? That's used to designate drop-zones, targets, etc., generally replacing a noun with a code word for that noun, not to spell out words the way a true alphabet is used. My point is that neither direct mirroring nor radiotelephony can account for the lack of any indication of how to pronounce the written word (other than understanding spoken English and knowing the script lol). But since we DO know the vocal half, we have to try to use Aurebesh to denote those sounds, every last one, which gets less and less possible the more you try to actually utilize it as illustrated above. Or am I just crazy? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CommanderZel Posted November 23, 2015 Report Share Posted November 23, 2015 One could also implement a written accent system, just like just about any language that is't English. We may not have seen any written accents (probably because they don't exist, but it is a fictional alphabet) but that would be one way of taking care of the pronunciation indication. That system could be additional markings to denote sound changes in individual letters or extra characters to represent more sounds. I guess the real problem is that nobody really reads anything in Star Wars. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TK 2759[501st] Posted November 23, 2015 Report Share Posted November 23, 2015 I took Aurebesh as a form of writing for Basic.... Basic being the trade language of the movies. It's something people from every galaxy would understand without formal training, being a trade written dialect. From an RPG point of view as well as movies, language written languages were never really emphasized (as Tolkien's were). Each alien species has their own language, but can they be written too? I'd assume some are, but it's never been specified... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TK4205 Posted November 23, 2015 Report Share Posted November 23, 2015 I'm not sure who created the font, or even if the entire font was created for the movie. I just know that it makes our swag look awesome. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charlesnarles Posted November 24, 2015 Author Report Share Posted November 24, 2015 According to wookiepedia, it was originally reverse engineered from shapes seen in the theatrical versions in '96 by the maker of a SW role playing board game. Then it kept getting updated, but not to the point of functionality separate from English's rules. The more I think about it, the more I think it would take a true genius his/her lifetime to accomplish (Tolkein, indeed). Heck of a pipe-dream, but SW really deserves it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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