Spelling in Klingon and reforms for English

[Klythe]

    I find the latinate alphabetic orthograph for Klingon a bit unsatisfying.  Most natural languages are not built up from their orthographies, most have the bulk of their vocabulary formed before thier writing systems become pervasive and spellings become official.   English has the misfortune to have the official spellings codified in the middle of a mass sound change, thus the large numbers of irregular spellings...  There have been any number of attempts to reform the official spellings to be more line with a consistant pheontic transcription.   One of the shorter ones is below.

   Klingon on the other paw, appears to have continued to have a strong oral-only tradition, well after most normal languages would have had a standardized writing system.  Perhaps the pIqaD was not the native Klingon writing system, as Klingons avoided using it, except on starship.   Perhaps the writing system was imposed on them by the Hur'q and their technology.   Perhaps the isn't a native writing system.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A plan for the improvement of spelling in the English language
By Mark Twain

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.

Generally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeiniing voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x"— bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez —tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivili.

Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev alojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

[QoghtlhIH'u']

ye rait ent nowon wut understent enixing enimor

[tesseraktik]

Indeed, pIqaD does not look like a system that would develop naturally, or that would be comfortable to write in by hand, so it's probably not "the people's choice".  Judging by what I know of Klingon culture, I wouldn't be surprised it were once only used by artists and upper-class Klingons, and then forced upon the people in much the same way as the Emperor's dialect is always the standard dialect.
Another constructed language that does a great job of making the written language directly tied to phonology is la lojban., where the policy is that anything that can be written you should also be able to pronounce.

By the way, I might point out that Wikiquote claims that this was not in fact written by Mark Twain, but by M.J. Shields (Emdyei Yilz, by his/her own logic).
Furthermore, Emdyei isn't quite consistent in her usage of the letter 'i'; the 'oi' is not the same in 'doing' as it is in 'voist', nor the 'i' the same in 'doing' as it is in 'memori'.
An amusing text, though!

[ter'eS]

Indeed, pIqaD does not look like a system that would develop naturally, or that would be comfortable to write in by hand

I have developed ways to write pIqaD quite easily by hand, and I'm not the only one I know of who has.  My wife is a calligrapher, and she tells me it would be relatively easy to write pIqaD with a brush or calligraphy pen (although she has so far resisted my requests to do so).  Remember that the pIqaD we usually see is a typeface designed for printing, and you shouldn't need to reproduce them exactly by hand.

Of course, this only applies to the Unnamed Source pIqaD, which is made up of curved lines.  I think it would be harder to adapt the other font to handwriting, since it seems to build its characters out of blocks of wedges.

[tesseraktik]

Indeed, pIqaD does not look like a system that would develop naturally, or that would be comfortable to write in by hand

I have developed ways to write pIqaD quite easily by hand, and I'm not the only one I know of who has.  My wife is a calligrapher, and she tells me it would be relatively easy to write pIqaD with a brush or calligraphy pen (although she has so far resisted my requests to do so).  Remember that the pIqaD we usually see is a typeface designed for printing, and you shouldn't need to reproduce them exactly by hand.

Of course, this only applies to the Unnamed Source pIqaD, which is made up of curved lines.  I think it would be harder to adapt the other font to handwriting, since it seems to build its characters out of blocks of wedges.

Indeed, I've noticed that writing pIqaD is a lot easier with a calligraphy brush (in spite of the fact that I suck at calligraphy), and although I've never tried with a calligraphy pen I can imagine that it would help even further.  I sort of assumed that any way of rendering pIqaD glyphs - by hand or otherwise - is very close to the printed variant that we're used to seeing, although I guess such need not be the case.

[El Payaso Malo]

I write pIqaD frequently by hand. I took fifteen minutes and taught myself how to read and write it, although my written form is to be simple and quick yet recognizable to the typeface version.