Hyperspace New Short Fiction: JJM's "The Secret Journal of Doctor Demagol" now online!!!

Because of their obvious similarities, I wanted to imply some kind of connection between Dexter and Doodnik when I was writing this piece. At one point, I think I might have even considered making them brothers, but in the end I decided to leave things more vague. Since Doodnik's species isn't clearly stated in the article, I think the most that can be said is that it's implied that he's a Besalisk. (And, yeah, Doodnik's appearance doesn't exactly match Dexter's, but keep in mind that Threepio and Artoo in the animated series don't exactly match their live-action versions, either!)

 

That was pretty much my line of thinking in making Dracos a Lizard Warrior. They aren't exact, but they are pretty darn close. Especially if you consider one to be a cartoony representation of the other.

 

I'm glad you mentioned Dracos, because I particularly liked that reference in your article! Thanks for shining a little light on the guy!

 

Thanks to both authors for championing obscure characters from Droids and Ewoks! It was a very pleasant surprise to see the Lizard Warriors and Doodnik get some attention again after all these years.

 

In the current vein of discussion of online Star Wars EU literature, I was recently reading HalagadVentor' notes on "The Emperor's Pawns", and read the bit about Jax's meeting with Nom Anor and the idea of a Vong/Sith alliance. Is there any chance that this will get elaborated upon in the near future?

 

New fiction: The Written Word

 

jSarek, you crazy son of a gun.

Retconning the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew alphabets in with explanations is downright inspired, especially the recall to High Galactic. And the linguistics geek in me is happy about the subject matter too.

 

w00t! It's finally up!

Still unsure how I feel about incorporating the Roman alphabet into the "real" universe vs. keeping it a fourth-wall conceit, but I must say it was very artistically done. Kudos also for the tie-ins to galactic history and being the first get anything out of the Vader-chestplate script.

 

Well, there's been evidence that the Roman alphabet is its own entity. The Corporate Sector Authority logo has both an Aurebesh Cresh-Senth-Aurek and a "CSA". It's also nice to have an explanation for the signatures, which could be explained as a "translated for the benefit of the audience" thing, but since they're supposed to be more IU, and we have signatures from the same sources that are in alien alphabets, it's a good retcon.

 

So what this means is that Basic is English, whereas Old High Galactic (which claims to be paleobasic) is actually an Alsakan conlang that did, however, preserve the alphabet? Inspired!

Two questions: firstly, any chance that "Common Sith" is that old prosteletyzer Imperial Aramaic (perhaps introduced by the Exiles) rather than one of its descendant-scripts (and thus no real relation to Massassi either); and secondly, do we use the influence of Ratakan script to explain the weirdnesses in the Aurebesh?

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Grr...

Just when I think I'm out... they pull me back in.

Fighting the temptation to renew Hyperspace...

At any rate, congrats to ol' Rekky. I'd suspected that he'd be doing one of these things, although a part of me had hoped it would be a Chandler-esque tale. But this sounds just as interesting. Actually, more interesting.

 

jSarek, I love you. This is awesome.

 

No, High Galactic is a direct descendant of the pre-Basic Coruscanti language, while Basic is a creole of Coruscanti, Durese, and other sources.

 

Thanks. I think you'll probably enjoy my endnotes when I finally get them organized. As a linguist friend of mine said when proofreading my manuscript, "You have a single footnote citing both Knights of the Old Republic and The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language? Holy [poodoo]."

Well, I was fairly careful to not tie the two alphabets together *too* explicitly. While the shape of Y-wings and X-wings make it clear that at least *some* Roman-shaped letters exist in the High Galactic Alphabet, I don't think it's a nail in the coffin for those who advocate "Star Wars is translated into English for our benefit!" in any way. We've known since WEG there were multiple alphabets used to write Basic; we just didn't know until now *which* specific alphabet either is identical to, or else is translated into, Roman letters.

While I happen to fall pretty firmly into the "Basic is English!" camp, I prefer that argument to remain a matter of each reader's interpretation, not a canon say-so . . . and certainly not *my* say-so. ;-)

Exactly. Again, you can assume those aren't really Roman letters they're writing, but have been translated into them for the benefit of an Earthly audience; but if you do, it's kind of hard to ignore that there *are* multiple alphabets at work, and that one is singled out for the benefit of translation.

Well, no, High Galactic's alphabet is the construct, built with Tionese letters (an explanation for the Greek-identical letters found in the Roman alphabet) and letters of their own devising. The language itself is a natlang, the conservative descendant of the Old Coruscanti tongue used by Coruscant's colonists to the world, re-branded (but not significantly changed) for Alsakan's cultural campaign.

EDIT: You know, like Hydro just said. ;-)

In answer to your first question, I could only go so far with historical parallelism, but I see the Common Sith script as being more like Demotic Egyptian in historical role, even though it's Hebrew in form. As written, the Sith species were spreading Common Sith to their colony worlds long before first encountering the Exiles, though if anyone can find the wiggle room in the text to find a differing interpretation, it's you. ;-)

In answer to your second question, I'm not sure which specific "weirdnesses" you're referring to. If you mean it sometimes gets seen upside-down and ba

 

Super congratulations, jSarek! And forthcoming endnotes, to boot!

 

jSarek, you magnificent barve!

You have taken nearly every concern I've ever had about Star Wars alphabets, diced them and tossed them, and made us all a delicious salad of linguistic awesomeness.

Now give me a good canonical explanation for "jeez" that doesn't involve Tolkien-esque realtime translation, and you will be the awesomest person in the history of awesome.

 

jSarek - you rule. It's a brilliant piece of literature and I hope there's more to come. I'm especially interested in the piece Star Maps and Scripts: The Rakata Connection, so if you could arrange something...

Well, congratulations. I really enjoyed reading it.

 

It was good, but I must say I'm still unconvinced as for the need for the latin alphabet's existence (X-wings and Y-wings? Does a TIE-Fighter presume the existence of a tie?)

 

Impressive work, jSarek. I'm always a sucker for Star Wars academia...

 

But does a TIE actually look like a tie?

 

No less than a Y-Wing looks like a "Y".

 

Maybe if you're comparing the TIE fighter to a bowtie. But to a normal neck tie? No, I think it would look a lot less like such a tie than a Y-wing looks like a Y.

 

Well, a capital Y, maybe. Doesn't look like "y".

 

AWESOME new HS piece of pure gold! congrats!


though I sadly missed Huttese in it and some other languages/writings found throughout WEG and other sources like computer games, etc. I hope you can follow up on these with later stuff please.