tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jan 31 09:03:08 2012
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[Tlhingan-hol] Vocabulary Sources & Sort Order
I'm in the course of doing something that every Klingonist should do,
but that I admit to having never done: typing out all the vocabulary.
I started (most of you know this story) with a first printing, first
edition of TKD that I wanted to keep nice, so I memorized the
vocabulary in order to avoid over-thumbing it. I bought the second
edition, and subsequent Okrand works, but I tried to learn each new
word as it came out, and then used ter'eS's wonderful KLIflash tool
for cementing my vocabulary. In recent years my command of the
vocabulary has dropped specifically because when DOS stopped being
accessible on Windowns machines, I could no longer use
KLIflash. I've finally started the project that everyone else did
fifteen years ago. It's easy going because I do know the vocabulary,
so don't have to type the words letter-by-letter like a beginner
would. I'm enjoying the review and am still being occasionally
surprised by reminders like, "oh, laj is a noun, too."
I'm just starting the v's in KGT and the thing that made me write
this post is the amusement that as I get to words like vaH in KGT, or
even ghoch in the TKD appendix, I say, "wait, no, this is original
vocabulary" and go back and confirm that it's an original TKD word. I
think it's funny that my brain has saved when it learned the words
along with the words. I think the language must be a different
experience for everyone who never had to function in it without
{'uch} and it will be a different experience again for those to come
whose tlhIngan Hol has always been rich with food words, and always
included words for "hole", "window" and "table." Now if only I had
"bridge," the sort that goes over a river. not raghjaj 'oghlaHghachmaj!
Speaking of creativity, when it comes to sorting lists in Klingon,
let's see, if I substitute:
' --> z
ch --> c
gh --> f
ng -->nx
Q --> Qx
tlh --> tx
do the sort and then reverse the procedure, I think will get almost
the correct sort order without losing information. A word like
bot'eng would end up after botlh'eng, but I don't think there are any
examples like that.
I can't do tlh->tz, because then bot'eng becomes botzeng and
botlh'eng becomes botzzeng and reversing the process gives either
botlheng and botlh'eng or bot'eng and bot''eng.
I suppose the safe option is to sub every single letter so that the
26 Klingon ones become the 26 latin ones, in an order that subs the
two and three letter combos (I don't care what we call them) first
and then the undo needs to be in a calculated order, too. Someone
must have this down to a science.
- Qov
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