Basic Information

AL1 is basically a simple replacement of English letters for symbols. It contains all of the letters of the English alphabet as well as numbers and some punctuation. The chart below contains all of the currently known symbols of AL1 and their English language equivalents.


Background - Who Uses AL1?

It is never explicitly stated in Futurama who reads and writes AL1, but from the content of the signs, it is possible to make several conclusions about them.

  1. They are not human - This is illustrated through several examples. From the examples shown above, the beings who use this language have tentacles and view humans as sources of disposable labor, pests, and experiemental subjects.
  2. They eat human meat - There are many examples which illustrate this point. I have included only a few below. In each of these examples, it is evident that the beings which use this language view humans as a food source. Unless there has been a dramatic rise in the cannibal population of the Earth in the year 3000, this provides further evidence that the users of this orthography are probably not human.

The presence of so many prominent signs throughout New New York indicates that there is a large population of these alien beings in the city. It also indicates that humans either are not able to read this signage, or they simply don't care about its content. Given the cavalier attitude with which Futurama's human characters seem to view the rest of humanity, either of these could be true.

Follow this link to view a selection from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English and AL1.

To see more screen captures from the series containing AL1, click on the "Screen Captures" button in the navigation pane on the right.
To decode or encode your own messages in AL1, click on the "Translator" button in the navigation pane on the right.

The fonts which I used for this project can be obtained from The Futurama Point.