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

André Müller esperantist at gmail.com
Fri Oct 7 05:02:51 PDT 2011 

Things like that happen(ed) on Earth too. Some languages, like Mongolian,
developped a whole new (or rather: entirely modified) alphabet to represent
the sounds and syllabic structures of an important foreign language in a
better way, in that case: Sanskrit. We remember seeing some pIqaD on TV on
Klingon ships but whenever we try to decipher it, we get things like "ghvQ
apu HHDj" or something. So in-fiction we might conclude that Klingon either
used a different mapping for these 20-something characters of pIqaD and
later on changed to the system we know from EuroTalk (I ordered it a few
days ago, yay!) and the internet, or that the system was entirely different
in the past.

>From the number of different pIqaD characters, though, we can conclude that
it couldn't have been a syllabary (too few characters). A script like Korean
Hangeul or the Mongolian Soyombo script would work excellently with Klingon,
but it seems they've always been using an alphabet, just switched it once
(remember those blocky klinzhai characters?) and "now", sometime between the
movies and EuroTalk, it apparently changed the phonetic value of the
characters. It might be possible, though, to use a 20-odd character alphabet
in a completely different way. Considering that the core of a Klingon
syllable is always 1 of 5 vowels, there might be ways of representing these
syllables in different ways than just a 1:1 CVC(C) syllabic structure... but
that's mere speculation.

The ones more creative than me could possibly think of a scenario, where the
Klingon characters we know where given new phonetic values, maybe through a
political decree. Maybe the characters were found out by some Klingon
linguists to be once borrowed from a foreign species (the Hur'q?) and this
caused a scandal among the proud Klingon race, so the phonetic value of the
script was then randomized or something like that...

Personally, I have to admit, I've never been so fond of pIqaD.
- André



2011/10/7 Seruq <seruq at bellsouth.net>

> Perhaps there is more than one pIqaD system, like traditional Chinese and
> simplified Chinese.
> Perhaps there is a more sophisticated original pIqaD, which works in a
> Klingon environment; but
> along with learning English in space travel, they also over time developed
> an alphabet system that
> allows them to handle aliens words.  With DIvI' Hol being "alien", Humans
> saw this newer simplified
> pIqaD being used, thought it was the "normal, everyday" pIqaD, and started
> to use that.
> So, it is official, it is not official, and it leaves open a possibility
> for a full "canon" pIqaD to
> came to light.
>
>
> DloraH
>
> PS:  I can't stand this... I'm forcing this back to plain text.
>
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
>
>        From: Terrence Donnelly [mailto:terrence.donnelly at sbcglobal.net]
>        Sent: Thursday, October 06, 2011 16:51
>        To: tlhingan-hol at stodi.digitalkingdom.org
>        Subject: Re: [Tlhingan-hol] 2 letter language code for Klingon?
>
>
>        It's dangerous to speculate about what would be "better" for writing
> any language, but given
> ta' Hol's penchant for CVC syllables, something similar to Korean hangul
> would probably be the most
> efficient. But if other dialects of Klingon have different syllable forms,
> then a simple alphabet
> may have proven most flexible over time.
>
>        -- ter'eS
>
>        --- On Thu, 10/6/11, Josh Badgley <joshbadgley at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>                bIlughbej Mark.  I am very pleased with pIqaD as is.  I have
> found it incredibly
> easy to learn to write, and my reading skills are coming along well.  And I
> wanted to add a few
> thoughts.  First of all, the idea that pIqaD "turn[ing] out to be nothing
> more than a simple
> alphabet" is not so far-fetched.  Perhaps those of us living in Western
> countries who are accustomed
> to the Latin alphabet would find it more "alien" if pIqaD turned out to be
> an abudiga a la
> Devanagari or an even more complex system (like Chinese), but we are not
> the only humans on the
> planet. Perhaps a native speaker of a language written in Devanagari would
> find it equally "exotic"
> and "alien" to have an alphabet such as ours where the letters are not
> joined together and each
> consonant does not have an inherent "a" sound.  What I am saying is that
> there seems to be no way to
> devise a "litmus test" to determine whether or not the pIqaD that is now
> canon is sufficiently
> "alien" enough.  And I would also argue that perhaps Klingons would find
> such a system much more
> straightforward and economical.  Perhaps it would be easier for Klingon
> children to learn, meaning
> that they could spend less time on learning the alphabet and more time
> learning the art of war.
>
>
>                Just a few thoughts, I probably don't know what I'm talking
> about, but I think for
> now what we have is pretty damn cool.
>
>
>
>                -- jhb
>
>
>
>                > Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2011 07:23:18 -0400
>                > From: mark at kli.org
>                > To: tlhingan-hol at stodi.digitalkingdom.org
>                > Subject: Re: [Tlhingan-hol] 2 letter language code for
> Klingon?
>                >
>                > On 10/05/2011 09:22 AM, David Trimboli wrote:
>                > > I, for one, will be
>                > > quite disappointed if it turns out that the poorly
> understood pIqaD that
>                > > handles all the dialects well mentioned in TKD turns out
> to be nothing more
>                > > than a simple alphabet that happens to exactly match the
> transcription
>                > > system introduced in the same book. What a waste!
>                >
>                > It might be disappointing, and it would be cooler if it
> were otherwise,
>                > but it should be noted that if it really be as simple as
> that, even so
>                > that would be completely feasible as a "real" language.
> Such things
>                > happen all the time, when spellings get set to a standard
> dialect.
>                >
>                > ~mark
>                >
>                > _______________________________________________
>                > Tlhingan-hol mailing list
>                > Tlhingan-hol at stodi.digitalkingdom.org
>                >
> http://stodi.digitalkingdom.org/mailman/listinfo/tlhingan-hol
>
>
>                -----Inline Attachment Follows-----
>
>
>                _______________________________________________
>                Tlhingan-hol mailing list
>                Tlhingan-hol at stodi.digitalkingdom.org
>
> http://stodi.digitalkingdom.org/mailman/listinfo/tlhingan-hol
>
>
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Tlhingan-hol mailing list
> Tlhingan-hol at stodi.digitalkingdom.org
> http://stodi.digitalkingdom.org/mailman/listinfo/tlhingan-hol
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://stodi.digitalkingdom.org/pipermail/tlhingan-hol/attachments/20111007/5d6468a6/attachment-0001.html>

More information about the Tlhingan-hol mailing list