tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu May 29 07:05:19 2003
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Re: Klingon Alphabet
> David Trimboli <[email protected]> wrote:From: "Dr. Jeremy DM Cowan"
> Just a minor note: it's important to remember that this stuff we type in
> e-mail and read in TKD is NOT a Klingon alphabet. It is a transcription
> system invented by Federation linguists to describe the sounds of Klingon.
> We know very little about the Klingon writing system(s). For all we know,
> they do not mark the glottal stops in any way. We DO know that the
> transcription system makes the glottal stops at the beginning of otherwise
> vowel-initial words explicit.
From: "Klingon Emperor" <[email protected]>
> Is there a name for the letters in the Klingon alphabet? Seems a bit
silly going around calling 'a' the letter "ae" and 'b' the
> letter "bee." To me, that should have been one of the first things done
for this language, make formal names for the letters
> in Klingon.
As I just said, the system we use (marking sounds like /tlh/ with that
letter combination) is not the system Klingons use. Klingons have their own
writing system that we know very little about. We don't even know if it's
an alphabet. It might be pictographic, or syllabic, or something else.
We don't have information about how the Klingon writing system(s) works
because Mike Okuda, scenic designer for Star Trek shows (starting with The
Next Generation), wanted to be able to put up pictures of Klingon writing
without having to worry about what it means.
Since we don't know anything about the Klingon writing system, how can we
possibly know what they call the symbols?
SuStel
Stardate 3407.2