Kryptonian
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Kryptonians are a fictional alien race who hail from the planet Krypton. The most well-known Kryptonian is Superman. "Kryptonian" may also be used as an adjective to refer to anything created by or associated with the planet Krypton.
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Kryptonians appear to resemble humans, but their biology is much more complex. Much is still unknown about it, but the cellular function of Kryptonians allows for certain solar energy to be absorbed at extremely high levels when exposed to a yellow dwarf like Earth's Sun, giving them vast superhuman powers when on planets such as Earth. Super-strength, heat vision, x-ray vision, and arctic-breath are among many of the superpowers they possess. On Krypton, they were not known to possess any superpowers as the planet revolved around a red dwarf. They possess super-strength on relatively small planets, such as Earth, as Krypton's mass was far greater than Earth's. Kryptonians are vulnerable to Kryptonite.
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[edit] Culture
Kryptonians are a highly technologically advanced people. Their technology seems to be based on self-grown crystals which made up the vast majority of their planet's surface. The Fortress of Solitude is a recreation of Krypton's surface.
[edit] Language
Kryptonian is a fictional language spoken on Krypton, Superman (Kal-El)'s birthplace.
For most of Superman's published history, Kryptonian writing was represented by random, alien-looking squiggles. In the 1970s E. Nelson Bridwell attempted to rationalize these squiggles into a 118 letter alphabet, referring to the language as 'Kryptonese'.
In 2000, DC comic books introduced a transliteration alphabet for the written language dropping the 'Kryptonese' moniker in favor of the more commonly assumed 'Kryptonian'. All such writing appearing in the comic books is actually just English written using this transliteration alphabet to replace the Latin alphabet with a one-to-one correspondence, in a similar fashion to Interlac in Legion of Superheroes.
In the TV series Smallville, the written Kryptonian language is depicted as having a logographic component, with some symbols representing whole words or even names, though the transliteration alphabet is used as well.
With the ongoing development of the current version of the Kryptonian language, 'Kryptonian' has come to refer to the actual Kryptonian language while 'Kryptonese' refers to Kryptonian transliterated into the Latin alphabet or English transliterated into the Kryptonian alphabet.
The modern Kryptonian alphabet is comprised of 33 characters (24 consonants and 9 vowels). It is a highly synthetic language with some agglutination. The primary word order is verb-subject-object. The author has created a Kryptonian language primer.
[edit] Survivors
When Krypton was destroyed in an explosion, it was thought that the entire Kryptonian race was destroyed. This was untrue as the scientist Jor-El managed to send his newborn son, Kal-El, off-planet to Earth right before Krypton exploded. Kal-El grew up on Earth as Clark Kent, and eventually discovered his Kryptonian origins.
In Superman: The Movie, teenage Clark discovers who he is in the Fortress of Solitude, where a hologram of Jor-El tells him "You are the only survivor of the planet Krypton." This last remark also appeared to prove untrue as prisoners of the Phantom Zone, such as General Zod, also survived the destruction of Krypton. Supergirl, cousin of Superman, also survived Krypton's destruction and made her home on Earth as Supergirl.
The capital of Krypton, Kandor, was also spared from destruction as it was shrunken by Brainiac.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Superman Through The Ages: Kryptonian Languages
- Modern Kryptonian
- Alan Kistler's Profile On: SUPERMAN - Comic book historian Alan Kistler gives a detailed analysis of Superman over the decades, as well as the different interpretations of the planet Krypton and how Kryptonians acted.
