The "Kryptonian Language" has had many incarnations. In the early stages of the chronicles, it would sometimes appear as a set of random alien-looking characters. No concern was given to any sort of continuity, however, and from the 1950s to the 1960s, the appearance of these characters would vary wildly and were not always consistent from one story to the next.
Sometime in the late 1970s and/or early 1980s, DC Writer and Editor E. Nelson Bridwell researched these earlier incarnations of the language in order to consolidate them with the aim of creating an actual Kryptonian language. His language had its own complete grammar, a vocabulary, and an alphabet of 118 Kryptonian characters. His notes explaining this constructed language and its associated alphabet were never published, but a simplified version of it appeared in 1981's Krypton Chronicles mini-series and in other Bronze Age Superman books.
In 2000, when DC Direct started designing items that required Kryptonian, Design Director Georg Brewer, with input from DC's Superman office, created an "official" Kryptonian character set mapped to the English alphabet. This was an all-new version of the Kryptonian alphabet and is a direct mapping to the 26 letters of the English alphabet creating, in effect, a Kryptonian Transliteration font or cipher. At that time it was used by both DC Direct and DC Comics.
The character-index was first released as a paper flyer insert with assorted DC Direct products, including the Kryptonite Prop and the Bottle City of Kandor Prop. This marked the first time that DC Comics had ever published an alphabet for the Kryptonian language:
font by Michael Lee and Steven Younis
Also check out
The Kryptonese Language Project
This incarnation of the Kryptonian Language was also used on the outside
of the Bottle City of Kandor Prop box, where a story relating the history
of Kandor - including it's removal from Krypton, Superman's rescue of it,
his attempts to enlarge it, and his adventures with Jimmy Olsen as Nightwing
and Flamebird - was presented in both English and Kryptonian language
versions.
More recently, it has also been used in the Smallville television
series, Supergirl, and Birthright.
Known Appearances: Kryptonite Prop Insert; Superman: the Man of Steel #96, #109; Bottle City of Kandor Prop, Box, and Insert; Superman #166, Superman #167, Action Comics #776; additional comics and the Smallville television series.
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KRYPTONIAN LANGUAGES