tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Jul 26 11:31:48 2008
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: idea for writing system
I know, I've tried the creation of these things before. It get
near-unwieldy fast. But it can be done. It's all about organization. Look
at how Thompson did Mayan or Sir Gardiener did Egyptian. It's about lists
and numbers.
Yeah, I know the cuneiform thought. Klingons remind me of Hittites and
Assyrians a whole lot. I sort-of think that Okrand was inspired by some of
this Near-East History.
But it brings up the idea that a writing system in use and aesthetic is
mostly shaped by its writing utensil and its surface. We'll see what
happens. However, I suspect Okuda's made enough glyphs, it's just deciding
on the writing direction(s) and forms for different media based on
developing canon-organic ideas about Klingon writing surfaces and tools.
What is their planet like? What places did civilization develop and in
which of them was writing developed and in which did something else take its
place? What natural resources were available at that time and at future
times when the writing system was used? I don't plan on answering these
questions, but I have to ask them, at least, if my knowledge of human
culture and art is to give fruit in this project.
At least now I'm more eager for that Klingon Dictionary to show up in the
mail. I hope learning it is fairly easy, like Ge'ez but not French.
Despite Atlantean, I find Indo-European languages boring. It's the same
thing, over and over... modern ones are even worse. Like Spanish. It's
practically English (compared to Vietnamese or Tagalog), aside from the
idioms!
Klingon does "remind" me of the polysynthetic Native American languages, but
it seems now to just be its own wierd thing. I just spent a month studying
Klamath-Modoc, which has 1,200+ suffixes for nouns and verbs. How many does
Klingon have? Atlantean has like 50, maybe a bit less. Latin probably has
100 (5 * 10 + the tense/aspect in-betweens and other stuff).