tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Nov 28 19:29:36 1994

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Re: KLBC: Klingon alphabet (?)



According to Sami Laitala:
> 
> 
> Is there a Klingon alphabet/text font in use? 

Dr. Lawrence Schoen has such a font for Postscript and TrueType
for both Windows and the Mac. Before you start trying to
decypher a video of one of the movies, please be forewarned
that Michael Okuda, who designs the sets for the movies, greeks
all of the control panels and all other Klingon text. The
Skybox cards and even the Klingon watch have these characters,
but THEY NEVER SAY ANYTHING. Okuda claims that he can only have
the artistic freedom to represent a truly alien form of writing
if it never says anything. He will not "allow" any given
character to be assigned to any letter of the alphabet.

So we ignore him and assign characters to the specific Klingon
characters (such that "gh" is one character and "tlh" is
another single character, etc.

Just don't expect anything on any Star Trek set to mean
anything.

> In that case I suppose there's a text editor available that
> displays Klingon as it should look like.

Any Windows based word processor or Mac word processor can do
this. It does involve the reassignment of some keys, however.
For example, {q} is typed by typing a "K", while {Q} is gotten
by typing the "Q". If you type "X", you get {tlh}. Meanwhile,
most letters do map directly to what you would expect.

> Thanks.
> 
> charghwI'    ('cheerio' in Klingon...?)

No, it is my name. It means "conquorer", which is as close to
"William" as I can get, referring back, of course, to "William,
the Conquorer".

> Sami

Qapla'

(Now, THERE'S the Klingon "cheerio". It means, "Success!")

charghwI'
-- 

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