Aurebesh / Legends Aurebesh was a writing system commonly used to represent the Basic language . The name came from a combination of the first two letters , Aurek and Besh . History . Aurebesh was thought to have come from the writing system of the Rakata n Infinite Empire , introduced to the galaxy at large during that Empire ' s reign . It spread during the Alsakan Conflicts approximately 17 , 000 years before the Battle of Yavin . However , already by 25 , 793 BBY , Aurebesh was used by the inhabitants of the Settled Worlds , prior to their first contact with the Rakata . When contact was made , the Rakatan Aurebesh was apparently identical to that used in the Settled Worlds . Generally , Aurebesh was considered to be for the common folk , whereas the High Galactic alphabet was associated with snobbery . Luke Skywalker learned to read Aurebesh by the time he was four years old , from a set of old educational datatape s given to him by his aunt Beru . Features . Aurebesh implemented consonants , vowels , , and punctuation marks . Words were separated by spaces . Aurebesh could be written mainly left - to - right or up - to - down . All letters are the same relative size , although occasionally symbols were mirror - inverted to denote capital letters . The symbol for the Republic Credit was a Resh ( R for Republic ) with two vertical lines through the upper half of the symbol . Letters of the alphabet were also used to denote , such as the key of Cresh . While the Aurebesh had several glyphs that corresponded to digraphs in the High Galactic alphabet , they were frequently disregarded . For example , the sound " oo , " that was properly noted using Orenth , was frequently spelled with a double Osk . Similarly , the letter Thesh was often replaced by a combination of Trill and Herf . Such was also the case for Cherek and Shen , often written respectively with combinations of Cresh and Herf and Senth and Herf . Behind the scenes . Evolution . The Aurebesh - like writing that appears in the original trilogy is totally random and it is believed that the filmmakers did not intend to write any meaningful text with it . The letters were first assigned Roman equivalents by Stephen Crane at West End Games in the " Star Wars Miniatures Battles Companion " ( 1994 ) , for use with the " Star Wars Miniatures Battles " game and " " . The Aurebesh was later expanded to include punctuation marks in the " Star Wars Miniatures Battles " supplement , " Imperial Entanglements " ( 1996 ) . This " original " Aurebesh is occasionally used in electronic and board games such as Star Wars Monopoly . Since the letters in the movies are random , the assignment of the West End Games values to the inscriptions of the movies produces nonsensical results — most words seen in the movies appear to consist solely of consonants , and some letters appear on screen that are absent from the West End Games Aurebesh . In the 2004 DVD release of " " , and the Blu - ray version , the words displaying information as Obi - Wan Kenobi deactivates the tractor beam on the " Death Star " , which were written using the Roman alphabet in previous releases , are now in the Aurebesh . Aurebesh can also be seen in the prequel trilogy . ( For more information , see list of use of Aurebesh . ) Origin . The word " Aurebesh " was developed in a manner similar to the word " alphabet " , which is derived from the first two letters of the Phoenician / Greek alphabet ( alpha and beta ) . In - universe sources show Arabic numbers ; however , one of the fan - made fonts ( discussed below ) presents a numerical system based on dots and lines . In many instances , the sounds " ch , " " sh , " and " th " are written using Aurebesh exactly as they would be in English ( cresh - herf , senth - herf , and trill - herf , respectively ) , despite separate letters existing in Aurebesh for those sounds ( cherek , shen , and thesh , respectively ) . ( To see an example of this , examine the text in the picture in the Games section in the List of use of Aurebesh . ) While it is possible that these instances represent legitimate in - universe variations of the sound - values for the letters in question , it is more likely that they represent errors on the part of the real - world transliterators ( who are understandably more used to employing digraphs than employing single letters to write these sounds ) .