tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jul 01 10:18:45 1993
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Re: HoS voDleH jIH
[email protected] says:
[...]
: Well, from what we see of written Klingon in the shows and movies, it does
: seem to be written horizontally for the most part, so I guess we can stick
: with that restriction. But which way? Okuda says he tries to make Klingon
: look like it starts in the middle of the screen and works its way out.
: Maybe Klingon prose is generally written in two columns, with the left-hand
: column read right-to-left and the right-hand column read left-to-right.
: Maybe actually in four quadrants with the upper quadrants being read upward
: as well, but to my mind that may be going a little far. There's also room
: for discussion with just two columns:
:
: 1..............2 3...............4
: 5..............6 7...............8
Let's not forget that certain Terran languages (Japanese, Chinese, and Ancient
Egyptian come to mind) have variable reading directions when written
horizontally: in Egyptian certain hieroglyphs were orientable (though right to
left seems to have been "normal") and those glyphs would be reversed to
indicate reading in the other direction. In Japanese and Chinese, on the other
hand, context is the clue. Right to left used to be "normal" for horizontal
writing (and still is for vertical), but in Japanese at any rate, left to right
has almost entirely supplanted it. Also, two unusual Terran ways of writing
horizontally come to mind: boustrophedon (early Greek), where every other line
is in mirror image, and the method used on the Rongo-rongo tablets found on
Easter Island, where every other line is inverted, thus (all letters are
intended to be J's; numbers indicate order):
J1 J2 J3 J4 J5
r10 r9 r8 r7 r6
J11 J12 J13 ... and so on.
Qapla',
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