tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Nov 28 15:16:11 1994
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Re: KLBC: Klingon alphabet (?)
>Date: Mon, 28 Nov 1994 17:20:09 -0500
>Originator: [email protected]
>From: [email protected] (Sami Laitala)
>Is there a Klingon alphabet/text font in use? I know this is a
>silly question since it's such an elementary matter, but the
>Klingon computer console on board Klingon Star Ship (the
>Predator?) in Star Trek IV looked so fantastic. Ever since
>I've been wishing to get a copy of the Klingon alphabet.
>Klingon dictionaries are not available here in Finland, it'll
>take quite some time to obtain one, so I would appreciate if
>somebody would tell me.
Ah, the font question. OK, here's the state of affairs as known today (at
least by me).
The official writing system for the Klingon langauge (tlhIngan Hol) is the
romanization that Marc Okrand uses in the dictionary. That is, the usual
alphabet used in certain ways to represent the sounds of Klingon. That is
the *only* "officially recognized" writing system; it's the only one that
will be recognized by any newcomer with a copy of the dictionary.
There was a Klingon font published in one of teh Star Trek fan books (The
Star Trek Technical Manual or something?), which is referred to as the
"Mandel orthography" (after the name of its designer, I guess). The sounds
given for it do not correspond to the sounds of Klingon as we know it, but
it may have been used on some movie or another.
On the later movies and the series, another font is used, called the "Okuda
orthography", after Michael Okuda, who's a designer for Star Trek. The
script isn't used as a writing system on the show; Okuda just picks out
some likely-looking characters and sticks them in to look like nice alien
gibberish. Somewhere along the line, someone got a complete listing of the
characters in the font and made a correspondence between them and the
sounds of Klingon. I don't know who. Some Klingonists like to use this
font to write Klingon (though of course we don't really know which
direction it was written, etc), and even worked out handwritten forms of
it. Many others find it hard to read. But it certainly makes a nice
decoration.
>In that case I suppose there's a text editor available that
>displays Klingon as it should look like.
The KLI sells computer disks with the Okuda font in TrueType or PostScript
format (US$15 for orders outside the US, US$13 inside) for Macintosh or PC.
The Mandel orthography is available in METAFONT format from the ftp site at
ftp.kli.org. There is also a METAFONT version of the Okuda orthography
(coded by me) available there.
>Thanks.
>charghwI' ('cheerio' in Klingon...?)
No, "charghwI'" means "conqueror." It's mostly used on this list as the
name/title of a person, Will Martin, who chose to use it as his name.
>Sami
>[email protected]
>PS. I'd be delighted to correspond with beginners (can't
>say OTHER beginners, because I haven't started yet.)
We're all beginners, to one extent or another. And even in the meaning you
intended, most people on this list are just starting.
~mark