Alpha Beta as written in an unnamed Cybertronian script.

It's time to double up! It has been suggested this article should be merged with Cybertronian language. If you disagree, please discuss why on its talk page. Extremely similar information, and both pages lack important information that is featured on the other page.

An alphabet (from the Greek Αλφάβητος, "alpha beta") is a collection of written characters used to represent sounds or graphemes. Alphabets differ from logographies where each character represents a word or idea and syllabaries where characters represent syllables.

Simply put:

• English is written in the Latin Alphabet
• Mandarin is written in the Chinese Logography
• Japanese can be written in the hiragana syllabary

See also: Cybertronian language

Alphabets and Transformers

For the purposes of Transformers, "alphabet" most frequently refers to a Substitution Alphabet based on the Latin Alphabet where English words are written using an 'alien' alphabet whose characters have a 1:1 correlation to the Latin Alphabet.

The use of such Substitution Alphabets in Transformers dates from 1996's Beast Wars which featured Alphabets developed for use in both the Maximal and Predacon computer displays.

Decepticon graffito-tags from the 1986 comic book story "Decepticon Graffiti!" later evolved into a substitution alphabet.

Fan-produced fonts created around the same time (loosely) based on Transformer writing which appeared in the US comic and cartoon in 1985-86 would later (beginning in 2007) begin creeping into official Transformers productions, though the substitution-alphabet they represent does not, of course, work for the original stories they were based on.

Cyberglyphics, an 'ancient' Transformers script created for the original 2007 movie, is particularly subject to dissonance... originally developed and presented as a quasi-syllabary used to subtitle Decepticon dialog, it was later declared to be an ancient logography no one used anymore, and then promptly turned into a Substitution Alphabet. *sigh* Since only this last system is used to encode meaningful content...

Finally, there are Substitution Alphabets originating outside of the Transformers mythos, such as Aurabesh. (Aurabesh appeared on a monitor in ...For All Mankind.)

List of alphabets

Generation 1 alphabets

Autobot script

Originally based on samples of Autobot writing from the 1986 Transformers episode "Cosmic Rust" and 1987 The Headmasters's "I Risk My Life for Earth" which represented Ancient Autobot, a script no longer in common usage on Cybertron, but still used on colony worlds such as Antilla and Master.

Since (roughly) the inception of the War for Cybertron Trilogy franchise to present, the Ancient Autobot script has been utilized more frequently as the default Cybertronian language, and can often be found in fiction, on toy packaging, and in various pieces of marketing material, even for the Decepticons.

A fan-font based on this script was used by the AllSpark Wars "mini-ARG" in 2007 (again associated with an Autobot colony, and not the 'main' Transformer language) and its use has since proliferated as a de-facto 'default' Autobot written language. Generally carries a slight ethnocentric connotation.

With the release of War for Cybertron: Earthrise, numbers were used in the Tech Spec section of the instructions of the figures. Those numbers were, again, based on fan-made material.

Decepticon script

Originally based on scraps of Decepticon language from the 1986 comic book Decepticon Graffiti!, a fan-font based on this script was used by the AllSpark Wars "mini-ARG" in 2007 and its use has since proliferated across many media as a Decepticon written language.

Cybertronix (Beast Era) alphabets

Both these alphabets are nominally held to represent Cybertronix the common spoken language used by both Maximals and Predacons in the 23rd century.

Maximal alphabet

Predacon alphabet

Live-Action series alphabets

Animated alphabets

"Greco-Sol" Grecian

An (incomplete) Substitution Alphabet created to represent ever-prominent Greek letters (from Alpha Trion to Omega Supreme) rather than the usual Latin Alphabet substitute, "Greco-Sol" first appeared in the 2010 Transformers Animated: The AllSpark Almanac II book, used to label Omega Supreme and his comrades. This alphabet lacks an official designation. Its unofficial placeholder name "Greco-Sol" could mean Grecian-by-way-of-Sol (the human Solar System) but it's really a corruption of the phrase "It's all Greek to me!"

Other alphabets

External links

• Alphabet on Wikipedia