Peterson Kryptonian
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Kryptonian in the DCU
Superman (2025)
For James Gunn’s film Superman (2025), conlangers David J. Peterson and his wife Jessie Peterson were commissioned to create an entirely new, fully functional Kryptonian language. Development on the language began in early 2024 and featured the most extensive use of a Kryptonian language in any media to date. In fact, the a rather lengthy bit of Kryptonian dialog delivered in a recorded message from Jor-El and Lara Lor-Van to their son (Kal-El/Clark Kent/Superman), and its translation is used as a pivotal element in the central plot of the film.
The writing system, also developed by the duo, is a 135-character abugida. Each of the 27 base consonants combines with one of five vowel diacritics or orientations to form a complete syllable. The aesthetic they sought to achieve was “ancient and crystalline,” echoing the geometric and flowing styles of previous Kryptonian scripts while simultaneously creating something unique.
Grammatically, the language has a Subject-Object-Verb (SVO) word order (the same as English), and is highly inflectional/fusional. The Petersons describe the verb system as “meatier than we expected.”
SUH ANKRIPTON
Full documentation, orthography charts, lemmas, and dialogue transcripts are available on the Petersons’ official wiki: