[1642] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: "I" vs. "i" (was Re: Objects)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Mon Oct 11 12:18:36 1993
Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@klingon.east.sun.com>
From: Nick Nicholas <nsn@mullian.ee.mu.oz.au>
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@klingon.east.sun.com>
Cc: nsn@mullian.ee.mu.oz.au (Nick Nicholas)
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1993 02:12:54 +1000 (GMT)
In-Reply-To: <9310111257.AA24287@uva.pcmail.Virginia.EDU> from "Will Martin" at
Oct 11, 93 08:57:50 am
To Will Martin respond I thus:
#More on "I" vs "i":
# Early on, I deduced that Okrand chose to make the L lowercase and the i
#uppercase specifically because it was confusing. There is no other reason.
#The "S" and "D" are uppercase because they sound different from the English
#version of those letters, but "I" is uppercase only because it looks like a
#lowercase l. I didn't like it, but I accepted it.
*sigh* No, not at all. I'm a bit surprised you should think this, actually.
The I is uppercase for the same reason the S and D are: they sound different
from IPA s, d and i. IPA /i/ corresponds to 'i' in "machine". The IPA for
the sound of 'i' in "bit" is, in fact, a small-caps "I". (The obvious
question then is, why 'e' and not 'E', which corresponds to IPA epsilon,
rather than IPA 'e'. I suppose that English rears its ugly head here after
all: there are two 'i' sounds in English to be disambiguated between, but
only the "epsilon" sound (mid-open) occurs in English as a monophthong.)
# So after a year or two of grimmacing whenever someone chooses to use a
#sans serif font for Romanized Klingon, I finally got through my submission to
#this odd (and perhaps cruel) convention of Okrand's. I only use uppercase
#"eye"s and I can easily read Klingon with the case chosen by Okrand.
If we are to carry the convention of making-believe the language is real,
and Okrand a field worker (a convention I think overdone), we could simply
contend the romanisation is poor quality (why tlh and not tL?), with a
misguided paedagogical intent, and we would do what real linguists do:
use IPA, or at the least a less eccentric transliteration. (tlh actually
comes from such a linguistic tradition, which would also have had x for
H, or possibly kh for H and qh for Q). But of course, Klingon wasn't
discovered by linguists; it was invented by someone who wanted it
approachable for laypeople; thence the orthography. And I suppose we're
stuck with it.
# Then I find it awkward reading what I have to call pseudo-Klingon which
#is almost like Klingon, except that it uses a character Klingon does not use.
#The lowercase "eye" is simply not in the character set. TKD spells the
#letters out and "i" simply isn't there (except in one typo). What we have
#here is a dialectic choice to Anglicize one of the Romanized Klingon
#characters. We can accept it, but it's just a wee bit off standard.
Excuse me, but "I" isn't non-pseudo-Klingon any more than "i" is. This is
as ludicrous as to say that "ji" instead of "zi" is pseudo-Japanese. Neither
is real Japanese orthography; real Japanese orthography is kanji and katakana/
hiragana. Similarly, the 'real' Klingon /I/ is the appropriate Klingon
glyph. Sure, Pinyin is the standard way to transcribe Chinese, but to
condemn Wade-Giles as "pseudo-Chinese" is stretching things.
If we step out of the Klingon-found-by-Starfleet premiss, then sure, the
standard orthography is to be adhered to strictly. Just make sure you know
where your argumentation's coming from, though.
"Kai` sa`n swqh~kan t'akriba` piota`, N N O nsn@mullian.ee.mu.oz.au
kai` sa`n plhsi'aze pia` [h [w'ra te'sseres, I I L IRC:nicxjo RL:shaddupnic
sto`n e'rwta doqh~kan eutuxei~s." C C A University of Melbourne.
K.P.Kaba'fhs, _Du'o Ne'oi, 23 E'ws 24 Etw~n_ K H S *Ceci n'est pas un .sig*
