tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Jul 26 10:33:36 2008
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: idea for writing system
Now I wonder why this fact is touted about Korean. From a Hindi
speaker's point of view, English is phonemic with respect to "t" as
you mention just as Korean is with respect to k/g, r/l, etc..
On Jul 26, 2008, at 9:41 AM, Sangqar wrote:
>> The issue I'm referring to isn't whether it's a perfect match, but
>> whether it's phonetic or phonemic. Korean is phonemic; languages such
>> as English and French are phonetic. The character corresponding most
>
> Depends on how you're using the word "phonetic". A phonemic
> transcription would mark the "t" of "cat" and the "t" of "top" as the
> same sound; a phonetic transcription would not.
>
> (It's only because you used "phonetic" in contrast to "phonemic" that
> this quite technical meaning even entered my mind as a possibility.
> Otherwise I would have assumed a less technical meaning of the word.)
>
>> closely to "k," for example, stands for the sounds "k" and "g"
>> depending on the context because voicing is phonemic in Korean. It is
>
> Do you mean that voicing is NOT phonemic? That "k" and "g" are
> allophones of the same sound? Because if there was a phonemic
> difference
> between the sounds, having the same symbol represent them would be
> less
> than optimal.
>
> The Okrandian writing system is pretty much phonemic - as long as we
> consider the digraphs (and trigraph) as single "letters". It's
> actually
> not hard to programmatically parse written Klingon. Lower-case "h"
> appears only in digraphs or trigraphs, so it's easy to find "ch",
> "gh",
> and "tlh", and g never appears by itself, so it's easy to find "ng".
>
>> this feature plus the fact that the characters mimic the shape of the
>> mouth that makes King Sejong's work so incredible. AFAIK, there is NO
>> dialect of Korean that doesn't have this representation regardless of
>> local variation. BB
>
> While I do not speak Korean myself, I have been impressed with its
> alphabet. Although in some cases it is only in the most abstract sense
> that one can say the characters mimic the shape of the mouth.
>
> Personally, I don't see the purpose in creating a writing system for
> Klingon. Inside the fiction, we know there is one - we just don't know
> the details. Outside the fiction, we know Okrand created it using the
> Latin alphabet.
>
> But it certainly isn't going to hurt anything for someone to create
> one
> for his own amusement. But he should realize that it is unlikely that
> converts will flock to the idea.
>
>
>