Mandalorian (writing system)/Legends

The Mandalorian alphabet was a form of writing used by the Mandalorians, consisting of twenty-six characters. Despite there being no F, X, or Z equivalents in the verbal Mando'a, these letters were included in the written alphabet for greater ease in transliterating foreign words.

The True Mandalorians traditionally used it to provide information on personal datapads and ship-board display screens. Jango Fett relied heavily upon written Mandalorian to display relevant information on his HUD about potential bounties. It is most likely that by design, and his upbringing, that Boba Fett also displayed information on his HUD and ships systems in Mandalorian.

The New Mandalorians used written Mandalorian quite frequently in their everyday lives even though they relied little on Mando'a to communicate amongst themselves.

Behind the scenes
"From the beginning of the trilogy George insisted that there be no English characters. I designed 3 new typefaces for EP2 one for the StarWars76 (Joe Johnston), Mandelorian [sic], and one for the Geonosians."

- Philip Metschan

Prior to 2002, a typeface consisting of narrow vertical characters was developed to represent the written form of the Mandalorian language. It was developed by Philip Metschan at the request of George Lucas to be used throughout Star Wars Episode II: Attack Of The Clones. This typeface, erroneously named "Mandelorian" by Metschan, was created in conjunction with the further development of Joe Johnston's Star Wars '76 (originally developed during the Original trilogy) as well as a Geonosian typeface that can be seen woven into the Geonosian Death Star plans and display screens throughout the movie.

A common misconception is that the written form of Mandalorian was developed by Karen Traviss and Jesse Harlin for the Republic Commando multimedia project. While they did develop the Mando'a spoken language and it's associated grammatical rules, they are not responsible for its original written visual depiction. Karen Traviss often credits a 23-letter alphabet to Jesse Harlin. However, at the time, it is highly likely that they were simply working from an incomplete version of Metschan's typeface licensed to them by LucasFilm. The 23-letter alphabet may in fact be Ancient Mandalorian as named by Jesse Harlin. The absence of 3 characters supports that Ancient Mandalorian was utilised "in-universe" prior to the need for the current 26-letter Mandalorian alphabet.

The typeface was originally featured on displays within Jango Fett's Slave I and is now used throughout Star Wars: The Clone Wars (TV_series) to denote instances of written Mandalorian.

For the 2004 Original Trilogy DVD release, artist Van Ling incorporated the Mandalorian typeface into a number of transitional screens within the DVD's menu system.

Many fan-made typefaces have been created and distributed via the internet throughout the years, inconsistently varying and containing numerous fan-made characters. None of the freely available typefaces accurately represent the original "Mandelorian" typeface available on Philip Metschan's website that was officially used throughout Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones. When compared to the official version of the Mandalorian alphabet, common characters that are often incorrectly depicted (allowing fan-made fonts to be identified) include the letters "C", "M", "N", "P", "Q", "V", "X" & "Z".

Appearance

 * Star Wars: Bounty Hunter
 * Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones