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"Though the Rakatan writing system appears to be logographic, where each symbol represents a full word by itself, the various species enslaved by the Rakata adopted the symbols with seemingly no ties to their original usage."
―Doctor Milanda Vorgan, "The Written Word: A Brief Introduction to the Writing Systems of Galactic Basic"[3]

The Rakatan writing system[3] was the written form of the Rakata,[2] the language spoken by the species of the same name.[1] It was a logographic writing system, where each symbol represented a full word by itself, and was used throughout the Infinite Empire. The various species enslaved by the Rakata adopted the symbols with seemingly no ties to their original usage. Thus, such very different ways of writing as the Aurebesh, the ancient Durese syllabary, the Pre-Corellian alphabet, and the abjad of the Azure Imperium all use symbols from Rakatan sources, rarely in the same ways.[3]

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Examples of Rakatan writing system[]

The door of a temple on Rhen Var read "God of Storms" "Unleash" "Push here to open" and "Heathens be warned."[2]

Behind the scenes[]

"The source of all of these Aurebesh-like scripts is revealed to be the Rakata. As was pointed out to me some time ago, some of the symbols used in the Star Maps in the original KOTOR appear to be variants of Aurebesh characters."
―John Hazlett[4]

The Rakatan writing system, then unnamed, first appeared in the 2003 video game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.[1] It was first identified in "The Written Word," an in-universe article written by John Hazlett and published on Hyperspace: The Official Star Wars Fan Club, a subscription feature on StarWars.com,[3] on March 5, 2010.[5] Hazlett tied the Aurebesh characters to Rakatan symbols, as it had been pointed out to him that some of the icons on the Star Maps in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic were variants on Aurebesh symbols. Due to the fact that the symbols were sparse, he decided to identify the Rakatan writing symbol as logographic, wherein each symbol would represent a different word. The idea of adapting an alphabet out of characters from a disparate system was not without its basis in history: Sequoyah of the Cherokee used Latin characters when creating the Cherokee syllabary but associated them with entirely different sounds. In the section on Aurebesh, Hazlett referenced the Pre-Corellian language, which had originated in the Galactic Phrase Book and Travel Guide; the Tionese War from Geonosis and the Outer Rim Worlds (2004), and the character of Rin Assid, who was first referenced in Han Solo and the Corporate Sector Sourcebook (1993).[4]

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