Gallifreyan (language)

Various forms of written Gallifreyan have appeared. By the time of the Doctor, the archaic Old High Gallifreyan language spoken in the days of Rassilon had given way to a more contemporary form of the language. (DW: The Five Doctors)

This later "vulgate" was presumably the Doctor's native language.

File:Written gallifreyan1.jpg

An example of Gallifreyan script written by the Doctor. (DW: The Deadly Assassin)

List of examples

• Two Time Lords looked at a visual archival of information on the Doctor which displayed both a photo and writing. (DW: Colony in Space)
• A vaguely Arabic-looking script, in a letter written by the Doctor to warn the High Council of an assassination. (DW: The Deadly Assassin)

An example of the second type of writing: interlocking/overlapping circles. (Note the Doctor's handwritten note in the upper right corner.) (DW: Utopia)

• The Doctor left a note for the Supreme Dalek in a script other than English. This included the Doctor's "name" Theta Sigma in Greek. (DW: Remembrance of the Daleks)

This implies that the Renegade Daleks would know how to interpret Gallifreyan writing.

• A complex system of interlocking circles was used by the Doctor's TARDIS output screens in "coral desktop theme" mode and was the one seen in the notes that the Doctor scattered around the console room. (DW: Rose onwards)

Previous to this, we had seen the TARDIS' displays, when they appeared, in English.

• The Visionary wrote interlocking circles, which Rassilon and the other Time lords could understand. one of the words was Earth (DW: The End of Time)

External links

• "Old High Gallifreyan", an article by Jon Preddle on Gallifreyan writing as it appeared in the series pre-2005