tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jan 31 21:22:01 2002
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Re: Alphabet
From: "Alan Anderson" <[email protected]>
> TKD implies that there's some sort of phonetic system, like an alphabet or
> a syllabary. It says that speakers who pronounce {m} and {b} identically
> have to remember how certain words are *spelled*.
True, but I'm not prepared to say that Okrand was being totally literal. He
could have used the word "spelled" to refer to, say, the difference between
two different single characters. Let's say that the word /baH/ is
represented by @, and /maH/ is represented by #. Let's pretend that these
symbols are the symbols used by Klingons for these words. Someone from
Qotmagh would say /maH/, and his transcribing buddy would ask whether he
meant @ or #. Okrand might just have easily used the word "spelled" to
describe this, since I doubt he was being very technical. What other
layman's term is there to explain such a difference to the casual reader?
I don't think we can really infer anything special from this mention in TKD.
I'm not saying there no such thing as an alphabet or whatever in Klingon;
just that we don't have information verifying or even really implying it.
SuStel
Stardate 2086.5