tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jun 25 04:34:14 2009

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Re: Klingon orthography (was: Okrand at qep'a')

Mark J. Reed ([email protected]) [KLI Member] 

On Thu, Jun 25, 2009 at 4:59 AM, Michael Everson<[email protected]> wrote:
>>> a b Ä d e Ç h i j l m n Å o p q x r Å t Å w v w y Ê
>>
>> I think that both [Å] for {tlh} Âand [x] for {Q} are
>> counterintuitive;
>> you need some indication of the affrication. Â And my natural
>> inclination is to Ç as [dÊ] instead of [É].
>
> Well, Q is just a stop; it doesn't give an indication of affrication.

Well, <Q> doesn't appear in the IPA, so the capitalization severs as
some indication that it's not just [q], at least.

> In a number of transliteration alphabets Ç is [É],

It makes sense, certainly, but I've not run across it.

> though Ä is found

Yes, I've seen Ä and á used (in e.g. Arabic transliteration).

> in this case one of the motivations was to use the same diacritic throughout.

Makes sense.

> Happy with Å?

Sure, eng is pretty standard in more recently developed orthographies.
 Although the capital form may not be easily distinguished from N in
some fonts.

>> My monographical suggestion would be this:
>>
>> a b c d e g h i j l m n à o p k q r s t à u v w y â
>>
>> Only two non-ASCII characters, both in Latin-1 and readily typed on
>> most systems' "international" keyboard. ÂThey even have uppercase
>> forms if you insist upon using case distinctions.
>
> That's 10.3.4 in my PDF.

Sorry, did I miss a link to the PDF?  vI'oghqa'chugh qablaHbe'. :)

>> a b ch d e gh kh i j l m n ng o p q qh r s t th u v w y '
>
> You've done a nice job there, replacing H with kh so as to avoid word-
> boundary crashes with -h-.

Plus, <kh> for [x] is pretty common.

> You've left S as s though... not sh.

Considered it.  Thought it might be a bit misleading since {S} is not
really [Ê].  Of course, {tlh} is not [Î] either, but one has to do
something there. <tl> would be more standard, but you run into
ambiguities at syllable boundaries (e.g. {betleH}).  Honestly, I'd
seriously consider leaving it as a trigraph.

 If I did use <sh> for {S}, I would probably also use <dh> for {D}.

> So you've got here either

Sorry, should have transcribed the example into my proposals.  Here's
one with <dh> for {D}:

Qashtakhvish khoch dhish, loshlogh kholqhedh chenmokh thingan khol yejkhadh;
dheâmaj qengwiâ pothquâ âokh. Ghithmey leâ, ghithmey moth
je ngash khoch jabbiâidh, âej thingan kholqhedh, thingan khol, thingan
nugh je qel. Qechmeyâeâ ngashbogh nungbogh jabbiâidh nudhmekh âej
ghokhmekh nargh je ladhwiâpuâ jabbiâidhkhommey; mavuvchuqmekh âej
majaâchuqchuâmekh nargh. Kholqhedh niv lawâ, qhonosh moth niv push:
khadhchuâmekh qhonosh âokh kholqhedhâeâ. âOkhdhaq narghpaâ ghith,
âokh nudhchuâ lath, âej ghith ghithwiâ shovbeâ. Kholqhedh jikh
ÂYejquv PaqghomÂ, âej âokh bosh je ÂDhakh Khol YejkhadhÂ.


-- 
Mark J. Reed <[email protected]>

Back to archive top level