[Tlhingan-hol] Vocabulary Sources & Sort Order

[Qov]

I'm in the course of doing something that every Klingonist should do, 
but that I admit to having never done: typing out all the vocabulary.

I started (most of you know this story) with a first printing, first 
edition of TKD that I wanted to keep nice, so I memorized the 
vocabulary in order to avoid over-thumbing it. I bought the second 
edition, and subsequent Okrand works, but I tried to learn each new 
word as it came out, and then used ter'eS's wonderful KLIflash tool 
for cementing my vocabulary. In recent years my command of the 
vocabulary has dropped specifically because when DOS stopped being 
accessible on Windowns machines, I could no longer use 
KLIflash.  I've finally started the project that everyone else did 
fifteen years ago. It's easy going because I do know the vocabulary, 
so don't have to type the words letter-by-letter like a beginner 
would. I'm enjoying the review and am still being occasionally 
surprised by reminders like, "oh, laj is a noun, too."

I'm just starting the v's in KGT and the thing that made me write 
this post is the amusement that as I get to words like vaH in KGT, or 
even ghoch in the TKD appendix, I say, "wait, no, this is original 
vocabulary" and go back and confirm that it's an original TKD word. I 
think it's funny that my brain has saved when it learned the words 
along with the words.  I think the language must be a different 
experience for everyone who never had to function in it without 
{'uch} and it will be a different experience again for those to come 
whose tlhIngan Hol has always been rich with food words, and always 
included words for "hole", "window" and "table." Now if only I had 
"bridge," the sort that goes over a river. not raghjaj 'oghlaHghachmaj!

Speaking of creativity, when it comes to sorting lists in Klingon, 
let's see, if I substitute:

' --> z
ch --> c
gh --> f
ng -->nx
Q --> Qx
tlh --> tx

do the sort and then reverse the procedure, I think will get almost 
the correct sort order without losing information. A word like 
bot'eng would end up after botlh'eng, but I don't think there are any 
examples like that.

I can't do tlh->tz, because then bot'eng becomes botzeng and 
botlh'eng becomes botzzeng and reversing the process gives either 
botlheng and botlh'eng or bot'eng and bot''eng.

I suppose the safe option is to sub every single letter so that the 
26 Klingon ones become the 26 latin ones, in an order that subs the 
two and three letter combos (I don't care what we call them) first 
and then the undo needs to be in a calculated order, too. Someone 
must have this down to a science.

- Qov