.ëoS :bem
Greetings!

Welcome to the official page of the unofficial language project! This website represents an ongoing effort to flesh out a full working language for the home planet of one of the most popular fictional characters in history, Superman.

Kryptonian culture and its language (well, its writing, at least) have appeared in many different forms and places over the fifty-plus years of Superman's history. Needless to say, finding all of the relevant material, let alone getting a coherent grasp of it, is a difficult and daunting task. Add to that the many revisions and inconsistencies between the various comic incarnations (some of which are huge) and then throw in radio, television, film, and books, which all seem to do their own thing, and the idea of combining all that has been published about Krypton into something consistent is downright impossible.

So what is to be done? The creation of a Kryptonian language requires that one bring together many inconsistencies with minimal "deconstruction" of canonized material. Sometimes seeming incompatibilities can be resolved beautifully, but sometimes the effort leaves you fuming about DC's seemingly lackadaisical treatment of the Superman mythos - allowing new writers to make up whatever they want without even pretending to regard consistency.

In tackling this problem I have made extensive use of the Superman Through the Ages website as well as Kevin J Anderson's book, The Last Days of Krypton. The Richard Donner and Bryan Singer films have been a huge inspiration in developing a Kryptonian aesthetic, while early seasons of Smallville provided a lot of orthographic inspiration (although they've strayed way off the ranch now).

Throughout the site you will encounter facts and references to Kryptonian culture and history; Although I try to rely on existing canon as much as possible, much of this material has been created by me for various reasons. Sometimes it is to supplement existing material and to provide a richer environment to draw from. Sometimes it is to explain why or how something works or came to be. Sometimes it is a method to explain or resolve inconsistencies (or to simply pick a side). It is with great deference to the creativity already poured into the Kryptonian mythos that I offer these creations, improvisations, and interpretations of my own.

Here, I must give much acknowledgment and commendation to E. Nelson Bridwell for his work on Kryptonian which consisted of an alphabet of 118 characters, and Al Turniansky for being the caretaker of this tome of knowledge. It served as a great inspiration for creating a "modern" version of Kryptonian - one based on the transliteration alphabet released by DC Comics in 2000.

It is safe to say that without the inspiration of his work I may never have even thought of creating this new version of Kryptonian, and his Kryptonian numbers formed the basis of the modern Kryptonian number and math system (which has turned out to be whole project in and of itself). It is with gratitude, respect, and humility that I leave this older (yet neither irrelevant nor outdated) form of the language in his capable hands as I move forward with my own version of Kryptonian.

I have come up with an explanation for there being two versions which allows them to co-exist nicely; you can find it on the Kryptonian Linguistic History page.