tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Aug 18 07:58:19 1999

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Names for letters of the alphabet



The bad part about being here for a long time is that you get to 
see the "names for letters of the Klingon alphabet" thread start 
over yet again.

Okrand will never tell us the Klingon "name" for the letters of 
the alphabet because this isn't a Klingon alphabet. Klingon 
supposedly uses a writing system that Okrand does not 
understand. What he presents as an alphabet is a "romanized" 
phonetic writing system that he, as a human being, made up. It 
has nothing to do with the way Klingons write.

So, there is no non-English way to express these letters. If you 
say, "ay, bee, cee-aych, dee..." etc., except for the {q, Q} 
pairing, the case will be already apparent.

Long ago, I came up with my own name system which used each 
letter WITHOUT using any existing words. I thought it was cool. 
Not many people were impressed. So, lots of other people came up 
with their own system, often using existing words, and the word 
creators thought their system was cool, but nobody else got 
worked up about it.

And so it will go, forever. Each person who comes up with a 
system will feel like it is the neatest thing since sliced 
bread, and very few other people will be impressed. The system 
will be forgotten and then someone who never saw this thread 
before will come up with this really cool system for naming the 
letters of the Klingon alphabet...

charghwI' 'utlh

On Wed, 18 Aug 1999 07:45:31 PDT marian danzig 
<[email protected]> wrote:

> 
> 
> 
> [email protected] wrote:
> > >  what are the 'names' of the letters in the klingon alphabet? (ie >>in
> >>english
> > >  we have 'ay' 'bee' 'see' 'cue' 'ess' 'double-u' 'wy' etc).
> > >  most of them for all intents and puposes would be the same, like a, t, 
> >y,
> > >  etc, but it gets kind of tedious saying 'big q', 'little q', and
> > >  'apostrophe' (not to mention 'the t-l-h ligature'!), so do they have 
> >names?
> > >
> >Not as such, but here's a list *I* stink works well:
> >
> >b-baS
> >ch-chal
> >D-DeS
> >gh-ghop
> >H-HoH
> >j-jat
> >l-law'
> >m-mIn
> >n-nagh
> >ng-ngem
> >p-pong
> >q-qul :-)
> >Q-Qapla!
> >r-rIn
> >S-Sor
> >t-tIn
> >tlh-tlhuH
> >v-veng
> >w-wam
> >y-yay
> >'-'etlh
> >
> >Of course, *I* maintain that Klingon is written more like Chinese and so
> >would have no actual letters.
> >
> 
> QuljIb, i like it!! it may not be canon (is it?) but it gets
> the job done. somebody should hit okrand with this question (and QuljiIb's 
> suggestion) so that we *do* have canon phonetics for the letters.
> 
> S'Qal
> 
> 
> ______________________________________________________
> Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com

Will Martin
UVA ITC Computer Support Services



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