Differing alphabets for use with thlIngan Hol

[qoSagh]

[Edit -- thread continues from Evolution within artificial languages]

Interesting that we are talking about evolution of the language. One aspect of this that I have always been interested in is the evolution of the alphabet. I know that in a fictional sense tlhIngan Hol is very old, but in a real life sense it is still very young. Yet of all the supposed Klingon alphabets I have seen they are either strict replacement alphabets for English and really don't fit well for tlhIngan Hol, mostly because they don't address upper and lower case. The other type I have found deals with the basic letters at use, but doesn't really address the sounds of tlhIngan Hol.

A while back I developed one, and while it is far from perfect, it solves what for me was always a curious functionality issue, and that is the vowel blends. I have seen a few that remember that tlh is a single letter, but then treat ay as a double letter. Klingon words are long enough, to me giving each sound it's own single letter helps in two ways. First it eliminates confusion between ay and a followed by y as in the compound word DayIn. Second this would of course help compress some long words, which would help with long sentences, etc.

Now when I have shown off this alphabet in the past, I have been met with interest by the non speakers and more or less universal disdain by speakers, especially members of the KLI, because my was simply just not the way these things were done.

[ter'eS]

qoSagh, you've got me totally confused.  What supposed Klingon alphabets have you seen, and what sort of replacement alphabet did you devise?  Is it based on the English alphabet?  If so, how is it better than the usual way of writing Klingon?  If it's a new script, how is it better than pIqaD?

Have you seen pIqaD?  The font used by most of us maps perfectly to the sounds of Klingon (tlh, for example, is a single letter).  It is definely not a replacement alphabet for English.

As for your specific example of wanting to distinguish y used by itself from y used in compounds, this might be a nice feature, but it doesn't fit with the actual nature of the y-sound, which is actually neither a vowel or a consonant (at least in English), but is called a semi-vowel and is basically a coloring added to the onset or ending of a true vowel.  So ambiguity is built into the nature of the sound.  Besides, the "confusion" you seem to think that DayIn causes would not be confusing to an experienced user, who would know that Day-In is a very unlikely word shape in Klingon.

Maybe people were cool to your idea because it isn't an improvement over what we already have.

[qoSagh]

First of all the word pIqaD does not refer to a single alphabet but I would think to any and all alphabets which may come about, as the true definition is Klingon Writing System. The fact that there is a single one that is being called that is the mistake, but one which has and probably will continue to evolve into a non-mistake by common usage.

As for the multiple alphabets I have seen, some go back to the pre-TKD days, which is why they were replacement alphabets for English, but I have seen them used in major sci-fi magazines, and have on occasion even used them myself. One can write tlhIngan words in such an alphabet by only because one can write them with the English alphabet. I have seen some that include K some that have ng as a letter and some that have th (as opposed to tlh) as a letter. I even saw one which has a letter that I think my be nj but I can not be sure by the way it is labled.

I used y as an example simply because off the top of my head Da-yIn was the only compound word I could think of where this occurred. I am sure there are more, but the point could be made with only one. I did not use y as an example of a vowel.

While I have never claimed that mine was so much of an improvement, I have as I said in my last post, said that it addresses a couple of issues that the others do not. I have never claimed my work to be the sole alphabet or the right alphabet. I have been told that it was wrong, incorrect, or beneath the notice of "real Klingon speakers". Thus I used it to illustrate one aspect of the same issue this thread was started about, that of a general lack of evolution of the Klingon language(s) outside of a very narrow community. There are simply those that are more concerned with keeping themselves in charge than of actually advancing the culture they claim to be protecting.

[Qunchuy]

First of all the word pIqaD does not refer to a single alphabet but I would think to any and all alphabets which may come about, as the true definition is Klingon Writing System. The fact that there is a single one that is being called that is the mistake, but one which has and probably will continue to evolve into a non-mistake by common usage.

"There is a native writing system for Klingon (called pIqaD) which seems to be well suited to the various dialects. This writing system is not yet well understood and is, therefore, not used in this dictionary." (The Klingon Dictionary, page 11)

It is described as a single thing.

In real life, the writing system used during the development of Klingon was the International Phonetic Alphabet. It was not well understood by the actors who needed to speak the lines, so the transcription used in TKD was devised.

[ter'eS]

There are simply those that are more concerned with keeping themselves in charge than of actually advancing the culture they claim to be protecting.

You have an unbelievably inflated opinion of the influence of the KLI and its hard-core members on Klindom in general.  To be blunt, those who really want to "evolve" tlhIngan Hol are doing it right now, and it never once occurred to them to ask permission of the KLI or seek its approval, and nothing we say or do would stop them. The KLI has a certain cachet, and whatever little influence it has stems from that, but by no stretch of the imagination are we "in charge" of anything.  Those of us who  want to protect our language instead of jumping on every misguided scheme to "advance" it do so for one reason only: we love tlhIngan Hol as it is, and do not want it changed beyond recognition by people who (usually) can't be bothered to acquire, or at least demonstrate, any real understanding of the language before they start proposing poorly designed and unnecessary "improvements" in it. i can't tell you the number of times I've encountered some newcomer whose first postings to the KLI start off with complaints about how "you can't do this or can't say that in Klingon" and then come up with some lame solution that merely demonstrates their lack of understanding of Klingon, and sometimes of languages in general, only to have them vanish in a huff when the rest of us didn't immediately hail their idea as the stroke of genuis they thought it was.

If you want to make a new alphabet for Klingon, go right ahead.  You don't need anyone's permission.  Just don't expect me to support it.