tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Dec 02 12:16:06 1996
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: Engishization of Klingon (Was: RE: KLBC a phrase about Honor)
>Date: Sat, 30 Nov 1996 04:07:21 -0800
>From: [email protected] (Bill Willmerdinger)
>
>~mark writes
>
> >>now. (Am I the only one dismayed by Okrand's musing (threat?) that
> >>Klingon orthography might not be alphabetic?)
>
> > I'm not dismayed. I rather hope it turns out not to be, and we get a
> > nice weird one. I hope he gives us an excuse to make the alphabetic
> > one "OK", like the excuse I use, but I'd be quite happy with a
> > non-alphabetic system. Alphabets are too easy. Given Klingon's mainly
>
>Something along the lines of the multiple ways of "writing" Japanese? I could
>live with that....
yes, that's my own explanation for the alphabetic system. It's a
specialized, simplified version for restricted environments and low-level
education for foreigners, like teaching Japanese using only kana or sending
telegrams using only katakana, etc....
> > exceptions for rgh and whatnot). Or alphabets or syllabaries for the
> > content words and special symbols for the affixes (as someone
> > suggested). So we'd even have different spellings for the two meanings
> > of -wI', etc.
>
>Hmm. That's an evil thought. To make it really weird, there might be a
>different symbol for each verb prefix - even the ones that sound identical
>(ie. three different symbols for {yI-}).
Ugh, that *is* evil. :) And probably right. :) Even nastier, that might
apply also to some of the null prefixes, which who knows may have existed
once and were dropped and remain in the writing system... :)
~mark