A Few Notes on Krypton
I've come up with a new phrase. "Nerdademia" The pracitce of studying pop culture, fandoms, and relating fictional places and characters to real world concepts in an academic way.
My work only requires about a tenth of my mental capacity, which leaves 90 percent of my brain free to wander aimlessly for 8 hours of the day. Instead of being able to do something productive like draw or write or surf the net or read comics or watch tv or listen to music (Hey, I said productive, not mature!) All I can do is think. Think, think, think. So today I decided to look up how to encode my own fonts, as I am quite proud of my handwriting and would like to make it into a computer font. I found a website, Fontifier.Com, where you can download their template and upload it and they do the work, then you can see a sample of the font or even purchase a downloadable and installable version for 10 bucks. So I went ahead and DLed the template and did one for my handwriting (Cant upload it yet, because I’m at work and work suxorz) and I was trying to think of other neat fonts I want when I though, “Hey, I should do a hand-written looking Kryptonian because the official Kryptonian font looks all computer generated.”
Something you must know first is that I like writing notes to myself. Memos on what to do later, things to look up when I’m not on the corporate intranet, that kind of thing. But I work with a bunch of nosey savages, so I developed a habit way back when I was a telemarketer for my Uni of writing my notes in alternative alphabets. Back when I first started I used Cyrillic, as I had just learned it in my linguistics class. Now-a-days I use Kryptonian, as I don’t have to think about phonetics of words and it is just an alternative alphabet and not a different language system. That, and people see it and just see a series of dashes, lines, diamonds, and circles and the occasional pentagon. I’ve gotten pretty good with reading and writing Kryptonian, so much so that when issues of Superman comics come out like the most recent Action Comics storyline that have lots of Kryptonian in them I can read the words in the speech bubbles rather than the translations at the bottom of the page or panel. And ones that don’t give you a translation at all, like Superman/Batman: Supergirl I can read no sweat.
But, being the big nerd I am and given my love of language and linguistics (It was my minor, after all) it makes me sad that all I get as a Superman fan is one line of phonetically spelled out Kryptonese from an old silver age comic and a transliterated English based alphabet. Superman’s been around since 1938, you think by now they’d be teaching Kryptonese in applied languages and linguistics classes the same way they do Klingon. Surely someone in the last 69 years has come up with at least a lexicon/dictionary to use in fanfiction! So I decided to search “Kryptonian language” on Google.
The first site that pops up is Superman Through the Ages. I’m familiar with this site as it has a great deal of information on Kryptonain culture and society (more on that later) and I believe it’s where I got my first kryptonian computer font. Anyway, they had a link to Modern Kryptonian, a site created by UT Linguistics Major Darren Doyle, who is actually attempting to develop Kryptonese into a language, based off the aforementioned single line of phonetic Kryptonese and the few words of Kryptonese we have from the old Adventures on Krypton issues of Superman. He’s done a lot of great work, setting up a phonology, a gender tense construct for nouns, a system for plurals, definite articles, and possessives, as well as some basic sentence structuring. He’s also come up with a translation example, using the commonly translated “Lord’s Prayer” and has a Kryptonian<->English dictionary. I’m going to attempt to do a recording of The Lord’s Prayer in Kryptonian. So far, the language sounds somewhat eastern European/Eurasian with lots of hard consonants and glottals (but not as many as, say, Klingon) and lots of pre-nasals like in Swahili (Which, incidentally, I learned a little bit of way back in Awanas and is a very fun language).
This project fills me with happy. I’m such an aural person. I’ve always learned better hearing a song or listening to a lecture. It’s probably why I love audio drama so much. Kryptonian is something we’ve never heard spoken due to film makers/television writers using plot devises to automatically translate (Like in Smallville) or they simply say “They are speaking the language, but you are hearing it in English because this is an American made production.” Not that there is anything WRONG with that, but I’m a big fan of films like The Red Violin where you are hearing the language of the location when they are in that location.
Plus, getting to say “I speak Kryptonain” is just freaking cool.
SO ANYWAY, After I had printed off some stuff on Kryptonian language and pretended to work for a while, I went back over to Superman Through the Ages to read through some of their culture stuff. Which got me thinking about imperialism. Ha, what kind of nerd am I that when I look at fictional/mytical cultures I think of 19th century politics? Anyway, I was thinking of Jor-El’s instructions to his son to live among earthlings, but not interfere with our culture and understanding. On the surface, this makes Superman look like a dick. He comes from a world where his own father ended famine and hunger. A world where education could be imparted in seconds time by telepathy devices. A world where illnesses, both physical and most mental, had been eradicated through scientific advancements so far beyond our own that to us they appear magical. Who the heck is Superman to keep all of this information locked up in his artic fortress and away from the world that has adopted him as their own? That got me thinking, though, that Jor-El was right. Kryptonian healing rays and telepathic machines are too far advanced and humans would try to take advantage of them. Imagine if someone like Lex Luthor was in charge of who was going to learn what?
But Jor-El was wrong, too. That’s the same kind of elitist attitude that many western nations had during the 19th century when all of Europe was vying for control in Africa and the Pacific Rim. That our technologies are so far advanced that the locals wouldn’t be able to cope so why bother setting up public works services like running water for villages or supply health care for the indigenous peoples of the lands we’re subjugating. How different would the world be if the English and Dutch made the same efforts towards sanitation and comfortable living in all of their African holdings the way they did in the White-only areas or in their own home lands; if they didn’t discriminate because they saw the African tribes men as being inferior because their cultures and customs were different. To Jor-El, who came from a unified planet and a very enlightened society, seeing earth’s factionalized structure and tendency toward violence must have been a little frightening (knowing he was going to be sending his only son there amidst the barbarians) and his emotions toward earth culture must have been a lot like how European governors saw African tribes.
Kind of makes me glad that Jor-El was a pacifist and non-confrontationalist when it came to the issue of how to deal with Earthlings. If Jor-El had been more like, say, Zod, Kal-El would probably be the dictator of earth, ruling over a very small (.5 to 1% sized) upper class made up of Kryptonian refugees and other super powered people (Amazonians, Atlantians, though I don’t know how willingly either of those cultures would be to Kneel Before Zod™) while the rest of humanity lived in squalor and fear.
But still, would it kill everyone if Kal leaked out some Krypton tech? Maybe through Wayne Enterprises? Nothing major, maybe Jor-El’s device that could enlarge a single vegetable until it was big enough to feed a city? Common, Kal. Reactionary heroism can only get you so far.
And I just typed this whole thing and no one is going to read it. Seriously, if you read this, please comment and say something about your thoughts on the issue and I will draw you whatever you request. Seriously. I mean it
My work only requires about a tenth of my mental capacity, which leaves 90 percent of my brain free to wander aimlessly for 8 hours of the day. Instead of being able to do something productive like draw or write or surf the net or read comics or watch tv or listen to music (Hey, I said productive, not mature!) All I can do is think. Think, think, think. So today I decided to look up how to encode my own fonts, as I am quite proud of my handwriting and would like to make it into a computer font. I found a website, Fontifier.Com, where you can download their template and upload it and they do the work, then you can see a sample of the font or even purchase a downloadable and installable version for 10 bucks. So I went ahead and DLed the template and did one for my handwriting (Cant upload it yet, because I’m at work and work suxorz) and I was trying to think of other neat fonts I want when I though, “Hey, I should do a hand-written looking Kryptonian because the official Kryptonian font looks all computer generated.”
Something you must know first is that I like writing notes to myself. Memos on what to do later, things to look up when I’m not on the corporate intranet, that kind of thing. But I work with a bunch of nosey savages, so I developed a habit way back when I was a telemarketer for my Uni of writing my notes in alternative alphabets. Back when I first started I used Cyrillic, as I had just learned it in my linguistics class. Now-a-days I use Kryptonian, as I don’t have to think about phonetics of words and it is just an alternative alphabet and not a different language system. That, and people see it and just see a series of dashes, lines, diamonds, and circles and the occasional pentagon. I’ve gotten pretty good with reading and writing Kryptonian, so much so that when issues of Superman comics come out like the most recent Action Comics storyline that have lots of Kryptonian in them I can read the words in the speech bubbles rather than the translations at the bottom of the page or panel. And ones that don’t give you a translation at all, like Superman/Batman: Supergirl I can read no sweat.
But, being the big nerd I am and given my love of language and linguistics (It was my minor, after all) it makes me sad that all I get as a Superman fan is one line of phonetically spelled out Kryptonese from an old silver age comic and a transliterated English based alphabet. Superman’s been around since 1938, you think by now they’d be teaching Kryptonese in applied languages and linguistics classes the same way they do Klingon. Surely someone in the last 69 years has come up with at least a lexicon/dictionary to use in fanfiction! So I decided to search “Kryptonian language” on Google.
The first site that pops up is Superman Through the Ages. I’m familiar with this site as it has a great deal of information on Kryptonain culture and society (more on that later) and I believe it’s where I got my first kryptonian computer font. Anyway, they had a link to Modern Kryptonian, a site created by UT Linguistics Major Darren Doyle, who is actually attempting to develop Kryptonese into a language, based off the aforementioned single line of phonetic Kryptonese and the few words of Kryptonese we have from the old Adventures on Krypton issues of Superman. He’s done a lot of great work, setting up a phonology, a gender tense construct for nouns, a system for plurals, definite articles, and possessives, as well as some basic sentence structuring. He’s also come up with a translation example, using the commonly translated “Lord’s Prayer” and has a Kryptonian<->English dictionary. I’m going to attempt to do a recording of The Lord’s Prayer in Kryptonian. So far, the language sounds somewhat eastern European/Eurasian with lots of hard consonants and glottals (but not as many as, say, Klingon) and lots of pre-nasals like in Swahili (Which, incidentally, I learned a little bit of way back in Awanas and is a very fun language).
This project fills me with happy. I’m such an aural person. I’ve always learned better hearing a song or listening to a lecture. It’s probably why I love audio drama so much. Kryptonian is something we’ve never heard spoken due to film makers/television writers using plot devises to automatically translate (Like in Smallville) or they simply say “They are speaking the language, but you are hearing it in English because this is an American made production.” Not that there is anything WRONG with that, but I’m a big fan of films like The Red Violin where you are hearing the language of the location when they are in that location.
Plus, getting to say “I speak Kryptonain” is just freaking cool.
SO ANYWAY, After I had printed off some stuff on Kryptonian language and pretended to work for a while, I went back over to Superman Through the Ages to read through some of their culture stuff. Which got me thinking about imperialism. Ha, what kind of nerd am I that when I look at fictional/mytical cultures I think of 19th century politics? Anyway, I was thinking of Jor-El’s instructions to his son to live among earthlings, but not interfere with our culture and understanding. On the surface, this makes Superman look like a dick. He comes from a world where his own father ended famine and hunger. A world where education could be imparted in seconds time by telepathy devices. A world where illnesses, both physical and most mental, had been eradicated through scientific advancements so far beyond our own that to us they appear magical. Who the heck is Superman to keep all of this information locked up in his artic fortress and away from the world that has adopted him as their own? That got me thinking, though, that Jor-El was right. Kryptonian healing rays and telepathic machines are too far advanced and humans would try to take advantage of them. Imagine if someone like Lex Luthor was in charge of who was going to learn what?
But Jor-El was wrong, too. That’s the same kind of elitist attitude that many western nations had during the 19th century when all of Europe was vying for control in Africa and the Pacific Rim. That our technologies are so far advanced that the locals wouldn’t be able to cope so why bother setting up public works services like running water for villages or supply health care for the indigenous peoples of the lands we’re subjugating. How different would the world be if the English and Dutch made the same efforts towards sanitation and comfortable living in all of their African holdings the way they did in the White-only areas or in their own home lands; if they didn’t discriminate because they saw the African tribes men as being inferior because their cultures and customs were different. To Jor-El, who came from a unified planet and a very enlightened society, seeing earth’s factionalized structure and tendency toward violence must have been a little frightening (knowing he was going to be sending his only son there amidst the barbarians) and his emotions toward earth culture must have been a lot like how European governors saw African tribes.
Kind of makes me glad that Jor-El was a pacifist and non-confrontationalist when it came to the issue of how to deal with Earthlings. If Jor-El had been more like, say, Zod, Kal-El would probably be the dictator of earth, ruling over a very small (.5 to 1% sized) upper class made up of Kryptonian refugees and other super powered people (Amazonians, Atlantians, though I don’t know how willingly either of those cultures would be to Kneel Before Zod™) while the rest of humanity lived in squalor and fear.
But still, would it kill everyone if Kal leaked out some Krypton tech? Maybe through Wayne Enterprises? Nothing major, maybe Jor-El’s device that could enlarge a single vegetable until it was big enough to feed a city? Common, Kal. Reactionary heroism can only get you so far.
And I just typed this whole thing and no one is going to read it. Seriously, if you read this, please comment and say something about your thoughts on the issue and I will draw you whatever you request. Seriously. I mean it