Alphabet

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Alpha Beta as written in the Cybertronain "Greco-Sol" script.

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

Simply put:

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

See also: Transformer Languages.

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 Aurebesh whose 1977 creation predates Transformers itself by 7 years!

List of Alphabets

Cybertronix (Beast Era) alphabets

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