Re: klingon letters

[willm@cstone.net]

> hello,
> 
> for curiosity: isn't it strange that the klingon transcription in 
> english has "D", "S", "I" without any "d", "s", or "i"?
> why do you use capital letters at all (you could use "x" instead of 
> "H", "k" instead of "Q", "z" instead of "tlh" or something like that)?

First, realize that this is arbitrary, so why do you appoint yourself as being 
better qualified to make the choice than Okrand?

Second, realize that Okrand wanted something that could be useful to the 
general public. The characters had to be available on a normal keyboard and 
come close to pronunciations someone who speaks English would be expecting.

Third, there is a phonetic alphabet that Linguists use to write words 
regardless of the language the word comes from. Okrand apparently referred to 
that alphabet while choosing the Klingon romanized alphabet, though he didn't 
perfectly match it, since that alphabet is NOT strictly available on a normal 
keyboard.

The fortunate thing is that most (but not all) of the uppercase letters in the 
Klingon alphabet are unusual to normal English pronunciation, so being 
uppercase is a sort of flag to remind you to review the pronunciation. The "t" 
is normal, for instance, but the "D" is quite different from the "d" in 
English. Likely, that's a happy accident.

The main thing is:

This is the way it is written. Get used to it.

> bye,
> stephan,
> sts.

Will