tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu May 29 15:32:17 2003
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Re: Klingon Alphabet
Just saying that it sure would be nice if, when teaching the language to our children or fellow linguists, we could say, "now we're going to talk about the letter <?>...it makes this sound..." and so on and so forth. When we take foreign language classes at school or college, the names of the letters and the alphabet are the first things to be taught. I hope one day Okrand makes up names for the letters. Seems too Earthling to keep calling the letters what they are in English.
David Trimboli <[email protected]> wrote:> David Trimboli 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"
> 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
Glory to you, and to your House.
taHjaj wo'
Qapla'
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