tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun May 26 16:32:10 1996
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Re: Klingon writing tool
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>Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 07:39:06 -0700
>From: "David W. Schaefer" <[email protected]>
>I'm despairing, having missed most of this discussion. Thanks Frank for
>bringing it to my attention!
>Something to throw in the fray here: Mark asks "Why assume that the typeface of
>pIqaD that we've seen was invented before moveable type?"
>For one, the seal for the Klingon Royal Guard includes the pIqaD symbol for
>"gh." The Klingon Empire's been around for a while and the royal guard right
>along with it. I find it hard to fathom the possibility that a Klingon would
>decide that a imperical seal was decidedly unfashionable and resolve to
redesign
>it.
It's still not all that convincing. The Roman Empire was a long time ago,
but its typefaces, chiselled on its monuments, don't completely betray the
pendrawn origins of its letters (actually, according to some theories, the
Phoenician alphabet, from which the Roman alphabet and many others were
derived, had its very earliest origins as three-dimensional tokens which
were pressed into soft clay). "Been around for a while" when you're
talking about the Imperial seal is likely to be a laughably short period
compared to the history of literacy and language on Qo'noS. On a world as
violent as Qo'noS, empires probably rose and fell quite often in its
prehistory, while the language(s) developed apace.
> You could use the same logic to support the changing of the typeface
>itself. Klingons aren't one for design, unless it's practical or serves an
>intimidating purpose, and the likelihood of them developing a relatively new
>typeface for mass consumption is slim. After all, we see no other typeface
>anywhere. My feeling is that the pIqaD has changed little over the centuries
>and to try to parallel the pIqaD with the numerous typeface designs of our own
>culture wouldn't be terribly logical given the info we have so far.
>This would support the stylus theory, which I feel is the most viable and has
>just enough Klingon color to make it interesting...
Mind, I'm not saying the stylus theory doesn't make sense. Actually,
arguing the modern-typeface theory is *support* for styli, since the
typeface we have now definitely does NOT look like it's stylus-derived. I
tend to prefer pen-drawn letters and theories involving them just because
they're simpler. I don't really know what the prehistory of Klingon
writing was (of course I don't!); my argument is just that there's too
little evidence to go on given the single typeface we have. Even if it IS
the only one and hasn't changed in 19,000 years (highly unlikely; look
what's happened to Terran writing systems in under 10,000 years), we really
have no way of knowing that. Even the vaunted Klingon resistance to change
doesn't wash. If Klingons were so conservative, why are they fighting with
disruptors and (innovation!) forged steel instead of clubs and rocks? Much
of the development of Terran writing systems was also functional. Give a
moderately intelligent mortal race a few thousand years; you can be sure
practically everything will change beyond recognition.
>Dave S.
~mark
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