tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Dec 15 14:10:46 1998
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: KLBC: pIqaD question, and thanks to all
Erik (ta'HoS) wrote:
: My next question pertains to the pIqaD font that I have downloaded. I can't
: remember where I got it, but basically, the capital letters look like those
: found at
</kli/pics/piqdemo.gif>www.kli.org/kli/pics/piqdemo.gif. I
want to make sure that as I
: translate, I am getting the case of the lettering correct. I need some
: assurance that the lettering in that gif is the capital letters for pIqaD,
: and that I should be using lowercase accordingly. Alas, I have no character
: map for the lowercase pIaqD characters, so I can't be entirely sure that
: what I'm looking at is correct. I have not been able to find one on the
: www, either.
That's because there isn't one. Klingon does not differentiate between
capital
and lowercase letters the way English does - rather like Hebrew, Sanskrit,
Arabic, Korean, Amharic, etc. The capital letters you see are written that
way
in Okrand's system as a clue for the speaker to pronounce these sounds
differently than in English. Therefore, you NEVER capitalize proper names,
first words of sentences, titles, etc. when using Okrand's system. Note:
Paramount and Simon & Schuster frequently violate this rule in their published
materials - no doubt because not capitalizing such words feels "wrong" to the
professional editor, notwithstanding the fact s/he may not know any tlhIngan
Hol ("Klingon language"). For example,
tlhIngan Hol Dajatlh DaneH'a', qeng? ghobe', DaH vIjatlhQo'!
Kang, do you want to speak Klingon? No, I won't speak it now!
Here, the "I", "H", "Q" and "D" are articulated somewhat differently from
English. Cf. the first chapter in "The Klingon Dictionary" on phonetics and
the "Conversational Klingon" audiotape for further information and examples.
Be aware that lowercase "q" and uppercase "Q" denote quite different sounds in
Klingon and should not be confused. (I do wish Okrand had used "K" for the
sound written as "q", but he didn't and we're stuck with it.) Also, "ch",
"gh", "ng", "tlh" are rendered by one letter in this font and are treated as
such in the glossaries. Thus, words beginning with "ng" follow "n" and "tlh"
follows "t". Oh, and words beginning with /'/ (the glottal stop) are
listed at
the end.
Finally, just so you know, this is NOT the font or the system used by Michael
Okuda and his team of graphic artists at Paramount. He has never committed to
pinning down just how pIqaD works so as to give him an artist's leeway to
arrange the letters esthetically on displays, without having to worry about
linguistic accuracy. We don't even know whether it is an alphabet (like the
KLI system), a syllabary, a collection of ideograms (like Chinese) or a
mixture
of these (like Japanese or ancient Egyption).
Qapla'!
_________________________________________________________________________
Voragh "Grammatici certant et adhuc sub judice
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons lis est." Horace (Ars Poetica)