[414] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: Klingon alphabet
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Wed Dec 30 13:07:29 1992
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
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Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: Godfrey de Shipbrook <smylex!jlee@uunet.UU.NET>
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 92 19:26:26 EST
Richard Kennaway writes:
> a recap: there has been some discussion on the conlang list about the
> unrealism (if that's a word) of the Klingon font. How could it possibly
> have been written? Not with a pen or a brush, but then how?
>
> Mark Shoulson writes:
>> I'm still unconvinced. Even knives basically work like pens, with a
>> certain control over pen-width. Besides, whatever bizarre method was used,
>> I'm sure modern Klingons would use something pen-like, and thus their
>> handwritten script would surely look drastically different from the printed
>> font we have. The script we have relies too heavily on filled-in shapes
>> for it ever to have been drawn by nearly any method (Hmmm.... maybe cutting
>> out outlines from a thin sheet? That way you wouldn't have to fill in the
>> dark areas...) It seems that someone just sat down and decided to make a
>> sufficiently alien-looking set of symbols and call it a script. Which is
>> surely what happened....
Actually, the pIqaD *can* be written with a calligraphic pen; I've found
that an Osmiroid B3 nib with a glyph height of 10mm produces approximately
the correct height-to-thickness ratio.
The trick to writing the Klingon characters lies in rotating the pen as
the curves are drawn. (This technique is used in the execution of several
historical Terran scripts, albeit to a much lesser degree. Insular
majuscule and minuscule and Luxeuil minuscule are fairly good examples
of this method.)
Some of the characters do require an overlapping stroke, which is also
not without precedent in Terran calligraphy (for instance, the Lombardic
capital forms).
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