[411] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: Klingon alphabet
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Thu Dec 24 10:17:02 1992
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Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: mark <mark@dragonsys.COM>
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 92 09:33:05 EST
Why need the original form of pIqaD have been drawn with a
line-drawing implement?
Consider the Hero's Tongue, the language of Larry Niven's kzinti
(and never mind the animated ST version of them in the adaptation
of his story "The Soft Weapon"). The kzinti are hunting
carnivores, vaguely like bipedal quarter-ton tigers, and their
five-digit hands (4 fingers + opposable thumb, like ours) have 4
retractable claws. Their script is always described as looking
to a human like "dots and commas". I assume that it originated
with punctures and scratches made with the points of the claws in
some soft surface like clay, mud, or tree bark. As their
technology developed they might have used ink pads to ink the
claw-tips before pressing them to or raking them across some
paperlike material. Now that they are spacegoers with a high
technology they may be using pressure-sensitive tablets -- even
though they CAN hold a pen and manipulate it almost as well as a
human.
Suppose the earliest ancestor of pIqaD was blots and smears made
with a hand wet with some pigment. (Perhaps the first Klingon
"writing" was made with the blood of the prey, or victim, on the
body itself, to identify the killer/owner.) The marks would be
broad and areal, not linear. Even if modern Klingons do use
pen(like implement)s, pIqaD may maintain a conservative tradition
of shaped solid areas.
- Mark (marqem ?)
Mark A. Mandel
Dragon Systems, Inc. : speech recognition : +1 617 965-5200
320 Nevada St. : Newton, Mass. 02160, USA
ngImlI'jaj jaghpu'lI' tlhonDu'
