OKAY SO. I was asked for my aurebesh thoughts and I shall deliver! @zeawesomebirdie this is for YOU <3
Here's what the standard version of the aurebesh (I used it like you'd use the word alphabet because well, it's alphabet but in SW speak) looks like, rewritten by me but faithful to the most widely accepted version that I know of.
Now, this is all fine and good for computer fonts, since you're at best typing them with a keyboard. But to actually write, with a pen or stylus? Extremely inconvenient. Try to write that A cleanly but in one try. That's just not easy to write: the diagonals, the two different parts, it's just not made to be written.
I can hear you think "it doesn't need to be written though does it, who still writes on paper in the GFFA?" and fair, but. But. 1) some people just like Doing It Like They Used To in Ye Olden Days and there must be a thriving community of calligraphy enthusiasts making their own paper and writing in ink. 2) if WE can have apple pencils they can have styluses, if only to draw, and a natural extension of that is writing little notes. 3) and most important I think, but often disregarded, it's easier to learn a new writing system if you make your hand go through the motions. Obviously there are exceptions and obviously you can still learn by just seeing but actually going through the motion and gesture? That really helps a majority of people. Source: I took japanese and russian classes, and therefore had to learn both the japanese writing system and the russian cyrillic alphabet, and yes, putting in the effort to copy the symbols again and again with a pen in your hand works much better than trying to remember it from having seen it, and it was the same for a lot of other people in my classes.
(Obviously the aurebesh was developped hastily by people who wanted to make it a font before anything else AND who are most likely american, which is a country where they don't teach you cursive anymore apparently, so that influences things)
All of this to say, I think since the fun of being a fan is filling in the holes of canon and having fun with your stuff, I tried thinking of what a more realistic aurebesh would be like.
From my deep dive on wookieepedia a while back, I learnt that a few actual alphabets of our world exists in the GFFA, like Tionese is written using Greek and Sith markings are Hebrew letters, + our roman alphabet is called High Galactic, but is a very fancy thing most people don't use. So, the aurebesh is the standard writing system of galactic basic, which means it's probably very widespread. I imagine that people actually do learn to write with some kind of stylus, just to get you to remember quicker and because either you have access to the equivalent of an apple pencil, you can find a ballpoint pen somewhere, or you have an outside with dirt/sand and some kind of pointy stick thing. That means we need a more writing-friendly version of the aurebesh (not even a cursive version, just an easier block letter version, I'm still brainstorming that one because god this was NOT made to be cursive but my love of cursive is powering me through)
So here's how I write the aurebesh!
Purple are letters I've rewritten but without real changes, and blue are actual changes, ranging from "yeah I could tell what this was" (p, o, v) to "I think you need to know that it's this letter to be able to tell" (a, g, eo). I'm pretty proud of that A honestly! Generally, I rounded out things that could be rounded out, made simpler things that didn't need to be complicated to be understood, and reduced the number of strokes necessary, because needing to lift your pencil and come back for a second stroke is a huge time loss. You might also be able to tell that I took japanese for 4 years in my squares: the TH looks like a 日, the W like a ロ, the K like a コ, and the H is basically a 三 because I like to work smarter not harder and I love japanese. I made the V into a normal Y from our alphabet, and I still get I and L mixed up a lot of the time, but here it is. And YES I forgot the numbers but uuuh tbh I always forget them so yeah haha. Might do a few sentence samples just for fun + to show what it looks like when I write it VS my normal handwriting (because I'm a handwriting amateur)
Another note: I hate with all the fibers of my being the "reverse the letter and that marks it as a capital" because it is incredibly clunky and inconvenient. Nobody does it like that and it's stupid. I think making them bigger/smaller like the computer font version of cyrillic is the way to go honestly, like Д for capital and д for lowercase. I don't have the words to explain why but you should not mirror a letter and make it a capital that is bad and wrong and it clearly was thrown in there last minute when people asked. Either everything is capitals or the lowercase is smaller but please no mirroring T-T
If you have anything to contribute I am BEGGING please come tell me. If you have cursive aurebesh ideas I will ask for your hand in marriage right here and there. When I told my best friend about this they said "oh my god this is like Tolkien why are you thinking about how the people of the galaxy would use their alphabet what is wrong with you (affectionate)" and yeah.
(Also ALSO bonus aurebesh fonts I like, apart from the standard one: the Aurebesh Droid, Rodian, Cantina, and Typewriter. )
