[Tlhingan-hol] Mangling Klingon to make it sortable

[David Trimboli]

On 7/12/2013 4:36 PM, Alan Anderson wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 12, 2013 at 2:16 PM, Krenath <krenath at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Just a quick observation, but the alphabetical order we use isn't
>> necessarily "proper Klingon alphabetical order" but rather derived
>> from English/Romanized alphabetical order since we've actually
>> never been told what order Klingons chose for their pIqaD
>> characters...
>
>
> Page 77 of The Klingon Dictionary:
>
> "Klingon alphabetical order is as follows:
>
> a, b, ch, D, e, gh, H, I, j, l, m, n, ng, o, p, q, Q, r, S, t, tlh,
> u, v, w, y, '
>
> Note that ch, g, ng, and tlh are considered separate letters. Thus
> the syllable no would precede the syllable nga in the Klingon list."
>
> I accept TKD as authoritative.

Perhaps you misunderstand Krenath's point. Since we now know that 
Klingons have names for these sounds, we know they have an alphabet. The 
question he raises is what order Klingons arrange that alphabet in.

There is no way that Klingons just happened to arrange their alphabet in 
the same order that we do. If I remember my probability correctly, 
that's one chance in 403 septillion, assuming the above characters are 
the entirety of the alphabet.

When TKD says "Klingon alphabetical order," it really means the order of 
romanized letters adopted by the research group funded by the Federation 
Research Council. This is brought up on p. 77 because readers need to 
know how to find Klingon words in the Klingon–English side of the 
dictionary.

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