tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Jul 17 00:41:11 2004

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Re: canon pIqaD

QeS lagh ([email protected]) 

ghItlhpu' Jeremy:

>This has really intrigued me.  The idea had never occurred to me.
>Perhaps there's one set of characters to represent the point of
>articulation of each consonant and one set for the manner of
>articulation.

You know, that's exactly the idea that I had? {{:) In that way the ten Okuda 
characters could theoretically perfectly represent Klingon. (Of course, it 
still doesn't mean that the writing in the ST movies has to mean anything.)

>And then possibly a third character for voiced and
>unvoiced or the doubling of one of the sets to account for the voicing.
>Are there any examples of this sort of thing in Terran languages?

If I recall correctly, the Hangul system of Korean is originally based on 
pictures indicating place and manner of articulation, and the orthography of 
some North Caucasian languages uses double characters to distinguish between 
voiceless lenis stops and voiceless fortis stops.

>As fun as it is to imaging, I don't see it being very Klingon.  Somehow
>it sounds a little too detailed for Klingons.  I really feel like they
>would have a pictographic system.

It's quite possible. But the fact that Klingons use computers on their ships 
indicates to me that they probably have at least some sort of simplified 
writing system, even if it's in place beside a pictographic system. If 
you've ever seen a Mandarin typewriter, you'll know what I mean.

And thinking outside the language for a moment - I don't think Okrand would 
bother to spend two to three thousand characters' worth of time on 
developing a writing system. I've done it myself, and I'm still not finished 
after a year and a half of work. Plus such a system would be a whole new 
hell for Klingon speakers to learn. I think I'd rather focus on the spoken 
language and stay illiterate. {{:)

QeS lagh

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