tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jul 25 04:05:08 2008

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Re: idea for writing system

Fiat Knox ([email protected]) 

--- Lawrence John Rogers <[email protected]> wrote:

> nuqneH

> A while ago I had this idea for the Klingon Writing
> System.  The pdf file 
> supplied by KLI under Writing Klingon shows a disconnect
> between the show's 
> writing system and the language as-known.  The pdf
> article by Dr. Schoen 
> implies that perhaps Klingon has more than an alphabetic
> set of characters. 

> My thing is actually writing systems, esp. the
> pictographic 
> logo-syllabo-phonetic.  So my idea was taking all the
> signs occuring in the 
> canon, all the words in the canon, and combining them to
> form one of these 
> "complex writing systems". 

> (Western) people generally don't appreciate that complex
> writing systems are 
> the most commmon writing system type overall in time and
> space (on earth), 
> nor that complex writing systems display a far closer
> "fit" to their 
> languages than do alphbets, abjads, or even syllabaries
> (to a lesser 
> extent).  So we have a canonical basis for the complex
> writing system idea 
> and we also have the high liklihood that Klingons
> wouldn't use a writing 
> system so similar to English. 

> So I was thinking of making a writing system for Klingon
> that fits it like a 
> glove (or a meqleH) instead of a jacket pocket. 

> Does it have the sort of high consonant-to-vowel ratio
> that Afro-Asiatic 
> languages have?  I really thinking that if Klingons made
> up a writing system 
> for a past version of their current standard language, it
> would've been most 
> like onto Egyptian hieroglyphics with its mono-, di-, and
> tri-consontantal 
> signs.  But then I could botch it, to make it unhuman and
> just go with di-, 
> tri-, and tetra-consonant.  This might leave English
> Klingon writers without 
> even an abjad (voweless alphabet), but it would follow
> the concept laid down 
> by Okrand pretty well.  That-all would probably be about
> 600 characters, or 
> however many could be derived from canon.  They'd all
> have to have "Thompson 
> Numbers" like Mayan or something. 

> And then maybe Kligons have "messed-up art" so that their
> Pictograms, 
> Logograms and Ideograms have no resemblance to the things
> depicted, or they 
> just resemble unrelated things.  Some nonsense like that.

> Maybe their writing system could combine
> Chinese(semanto-phonetic blocks), 
> Egyptian(multi-consonantal signs), and Sumerian(syllabary
> + logograms) 
> methods of complex systems into some huge, super-super
> redundant system, 
> totally unhuman. 

> Anybody like the idea or have any scholarly, serious
> ideas for what where 
> this writing system should head?  Something constructive
> instead of 
> insulting or destructive this time would be appropriate,
> considering I'm on 
> my way to learning the language and berating all my ideas
> just gives me (and 
> everyone else who reads these posts) a bad, bad taste. 

Some inspirations for you.

- The Klingon language's basic subject/verb/direct object
sentence structure is the reverse of English, i.e.:-

OBJECT - VERB - SUBJECT

So perhaps reversing the direction of writing might help.
One could make it complex by retaining the right-to-left
order of the words, but writing each word left-to-right.

- Nouns are modified by a series of suffixes, of which
there are five types:-

NOUN - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5

So one could make one symbol suffice for one suffix.

- Verbs are similarly modified by suffixes; however, they
are preceded by a prefix which defines the subject and,
where there is one, the direct object:-

PREFIX - VERB - 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9

Two complications arise when you realise that Klingon
imperatives are also expressed through specific imperative
prefixes, thus increasing the range of prefixes for which
you will need to find symbols, and also the presence of
rovers, non-fixed suffixes which can be placed anywhere in
the list, within the rules set for each suffix.

- Finally, certain words (e.g. veS, Suv, quv, qIp,
tlhIngan, SuvwI', batlh, Hegh, HoH) might have a single
symbol all to themselves, representing their historical and
cultural importance: they figure so heavily in
communications that a literal spelling out of the words is
no longer necessary.

For the rest, you spell the words out with something like a
syllabary approach. Klingon syllables begin either with a
consonant or a '. I don't think an exception to this rule
has ever turned up in the three vocabularies.

Hope this has inspired you.


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