tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Jan 27 19:30:35 2002
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Re: Alphabet
From: <[email protected]>
> I know many of you may find this a ridiculous question, but I will ask it.
I
> am trying to teach a few friends tlhIngan Hol and was asked this. Are
there
> sounds for the letters of the Klingon alphabet? In other words, in
English,
> we say, "Ay Bee Cee Dee Ee Ef Jee Aitch. . . ." as a way of learning the
> alphabet and the sounds of the letters. Do we have an equivalent in
Klingon?
> Thank you.
It's not a ridiculous question: it has been much discussed in the past, and
people have invented their own names for sounds. Sometimes they choose
existing words that begin with the sound to be named, other times they
choose a particular vowel to follow the sound as its name.
However, there is no such official system. We don't even have a Klingon
writing system! When we write things in Klingon, we're using a romanized
system that represents the sounds of Klingon, not their writing system. We
know very little about their writing system(s). We don't even know if it's
an alphabet! (Marc Okrand seems to think it isn't.) Klingons never use the
romanized system, and so have no names for the symbols. (For instance,
Klingons do not use the symbol "tee-ell-aitch," so why would they name such
a thing?)
SuStel
Stardate 2075.3