tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Jun 23 11:26:07 2009
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Re: Klingon orthography
On 23 Jun 2009, at 17:47, David Trimboli wrote:
> Michael Everson wrote:
>
>> Well, yours might be a vote for the status quo -- but I'd like to
>> know
>> what Marc Okrand thinks, in particular about data integrity, sorting
>> and searching and so on.
>
> I know exactly what Marc Okrand thinks: the romanized transcription
> system is inconvenient and inadequate, but we're stuck with it. (I
> believe he has said as much before.)
"Stuck with it"? In what way? Klingon grammar in the 1985 dictionary
was inadequate, and the second edition of the dictionary in 1992
provided an addendum of emendations to that grammar, and as you know
vocabulary items have been regularly added from then to now.
(Oh, I forgot, in "Klingon for the Galactic Traveler" Okrand
introduced "U" for /Ê/ alongside "u". So he's already altered the
orthography once!)
> Marc has never been particularly computer-savvy, so I doubt he's
> given it much thought.
But now that we are in a world of Unicode, with all computer platforms
conforming to the same character set technology (where U and u and Q
and q are not distinguished and can be confused) it is not
unreasonable to ask him to think about these things now.
> If you spoke to him about it, he'd say yep, that's a problem, but
> there's not much he can do about it.
Of course he can! He could, for instance, implement a spelling reform
and publish a third edition of his dictionary. Heck, I'd be happy to
typeset it for him.
> Even if you hit upon a lovely transcription orthography, how will
> you get Paramount to use it or license it whenever someone produces an
> "official" product? (Consider, for instance, the Bird of Prey poster.)
It's hard to imagine that they are wedded to the 1985 orthography.
Indeed if there were a change, it could lead to would be a whole new
range of products. But I imagine it must be for Marc Okrand to
consider the benefits of a revised orthography for the long-term good
of the language and its community.
In none of this do I mean the least bit of disrespect to Marc Okrand
or his work. I trust that is clear.
Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/