[Tlhingan-hol] 2 letter language code for Klingon?

[David Trimboli]

From: ghunchu'wI' 'utlh [mailto:qunchuy at alcaco.net]
> 
> On Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 11:59 AM, Michael Everson <everson at evertype.com>
> wrote:
> > On 4 Oct 2011, at 16:37, lojmIt tI'wI'nuv wrote:
> >
> >> In Klingon, {tlh} is ONE letter.
> >
> > I'm fairly sure that you mean "the trigraph <tlh> refers to a single
sound".
> 
> Since lojmIt tI'wI'nuv is speaking about Klingon, what he said was
obviously
> exactly what he meant. See the introductory remarks to the lexicon in The
> Klingon Dictionary: "Note that {ch}, {gh}, {ng}, and {tlh} are considered
> separate letters."
> 
> Whether or not other language references calls it a trigraph is
unimportant,
> and we do not hear those words.

I disagree. The Klingon Dictionary does not describe the language with
precision. It is written for Star Trek fans and laymen. Michael is looking
at it from a linguist's point of view, and is describing it in more precise,
and more accurate, terms.

"tlh" is *not* a Klingon letter. It is three lower-case Latin letters
forming a trigraph to represent a Klingon *sound*. There is a symbol that is
sometimes used to represent the sound of "tlh," but will never be more than
semi-official.

Frequently people fail to distinguish between the system we use to write
Klingon and the actual *sounds* of Klingon. This is why I always cringe when
I see people create initialisms or acronyms with the Romanized system: you
don't initialize by sounds; you initialize by written symbols. A Klingon
using his native writing system would almost certainly not come up with the
same initialism you do using our Latin letters.

This is all a matter of terminology and inertia. As time goes on I see more
and more value to examining the language *as a language*, and less as a
tradition to follow. More precise terminology would help us. We don't have
to abandon Okrand's works as the pillars of the language, but they shouldn't
prevent us from understanding things on our own.

-- 
SuStel
http://www.trimboli.name/