tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Nov 14 10:22:39 1995
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Re: Q
- From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Q
- Date: Tue, 14 Nov 1995 13:22:36 -0500 (EST)
- In-Reply-To: <[email protected]> from "Jeremy Cowan" at Nov 14, 95 07:33:25 am
According to Jeremy Cowan:
>
> Remeber one thing: the letters would still be written as solitary
> letters. You are just looking for a way to represent the letters in
> spoken language. If it were up to me (which it's not even close), I
> would use the following:
>
> bI chI DI ghI HI jI lI mI nI ngI pI qI QI rI SI tI tlhI vI
> wI yI 'Iy' 'a 'e 'I 'o 'u
>
> I used "I" with all the consonants because, if I remember correctly from
> the scrabble frequencies, it is the most often used vowel.
QaQ qechvam.
> I wonder how the American Indians that Okrand has studied do the alphabet
> and if that would influence an alphabet that he might provide us.
Most American Indian languages were only spoken or signed with
no written form, hence no alphabet, until recent times. I know
of only Cherokee, which has no alphabet, but instead has a
syllabary. By that, I mean that it has no consonants and
vowels, but instead a character for each of the 88 syllables
used in the language.
You could think of it like they spell everything they say,
since the syllables form words much as our letters form
syllables and words. Each "letter" of the syllabary is spoken
as the syllable it "represents", so unlike our letters, there
is no difference between the way the "letter" is pronounced
unto itself vs. within a word. There is no gliding together of
sounds in Cherokee. Each syllable is always distinct.
The word for Cherokee is tsa-la-gee. Three "letter"s: "tsa",
"la" and "gee". So if you ask a Cherokee how they spell a word
that they just said to you, they would probably enjoy a good
laugh.
Heh, heh. I find myself invisioning a Cherokee spelling bee.
Those contests would take a LONG time to pick a winner...
Meanwhile, since Klingon IS a written language with characters
representing vowels and consonants, it makes sense for them to
have sounds to spell out words. Taking your suggestion in mind,
I'll offer another version, equally without authority:
'ay bI' chI' DI' 'ey ghI' HIy 'I' jI' lIy' me' na' 'oy pIy qe' QIy
re' SI' te' tlhI' 'uy va' wI' yI' [and ... ummm.] 'u''o'.
My method was to take the letters in the sequence Okrand uses
for sorting, using the most common CVC form with monosyllabic
names for each letter suggesting its pronunciation USING FORMS
THAT DO NOT EXIST ALREADY AS WORDS IN TKD. I favored the {xI'}
format, honoring the frequency cited above, and went to other
forms when those words were already in the vocabulary.
It gives it a realistic randomness to the sounds. I can hear
classrooms echoing across Qo'noS:
'ayyyy
bI' chI' DI' 'eyyyyyy
ghI', HIyyyyy...
'I' jI' lIy' me' na' 'oyyyyy
pIyyyyyy
qe' QIyyyyy
re' SI' te' tlhI' 'uyyyyy
va' wI' yI'
'u'o'.
> janSIy
>
chI' ay re' ghI' wI' 'I'
--
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