[562] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: Spelling: 'i' versus 'I'
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Wed Apr 14 15:59:20 1993
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: Ken_Beesley.PARC@xerox.com
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1993 10:52:35 PDT
In-Reply-To: "A.APPLEYARD@fs1.mt.umist.ac:uk:Xerox's message of Wed, 14 Apr 199
>> I understand; but please! At least let people use lowercase 'i' if they
wish, to distinguish from 'l'! As I said before, spellings like <yIlI> rather
than <yili> are confusing, particularly in typefaces which are sans-serif or
nearly so.<<
I have to agree with Krankor here. Any message for public consumption should
use the roman transliteration in TKD, right down to the last I, S and D.
That's not to say that this romanization is optimal, or pretty, but it's not
half bad. It does seem to be carefully crafted so it it unambiguously
represents the phonemes of the language, and we presume that one can convert
mechanically back and forth between pIqaD and the TKD transliteration with no
ambiguity.
Krankor is spot on about contrastive capitalization (as on proper names and at
the beginning of sentences) being an English orthographical convention that
should not be reflected onto Klingon. At least given what we know now. Not
only do Hebrew and Arabic have no such uppercase/lowercase distinction, but
even Latin lacked it originally.
I would add that the use of contrastic stress to mark words in a sentence, as
in the following:
He told *me* that he was happy. (me as opposed to someone else)
*He* said that the plan was approved. (he as opposed to someone else)
No, he *refused* the commission. (refused it rather than accepted it, or
whatever)
No, he refused the *commission." (not something else)
*Now* do you understand?
is also an Englishism that may be entirely inappropriate in Klingon. Even on
earth, English speakers have to be trained not to use such contrastic stress,
at least not in the same ways, in Portuguese (where such differentiation is
often marked syntactically) or in Tagalog (where it is marked morphologically,
on the verb!). Inappropriate use of English-like contrastive stress is also
fatal when speaking tone languages like Chinese and Yoruba. English
contrastive stress can be viewed as an English morphological feature or affix
that just happens to be realized as higher pitch and volume instead of a
temporal/linear prefix or suffix. When we try to use such contrastive stress
in Klingon, as in the example
*DaH* Dayaj'a'? NOW do you understand [it]?
we are also importing an Englishism into Klingon. Much like trying to use an
English -s to mark Klingon plurals. English-like contrastive stress MAY also
be kosher in Klingon; we await further revelations. But the presence of the
phonological topic marker, the emphatic rovers, and the phonological question
marker would tend to argue against it. It looks like Klingon does the marking
with suffixes rather than stress. For the time being, I believe that
contrastive stress, and Krankor's asterisk convention for marking it, should be
eschewed in Klingon messages.
Perhaps a followup description (The Klingon Encyclopedia?) will recommend
different orthographical conventions and tell us if contrastive stress works as
in English. Until then, orthographical quibbles simply waste time and
bandwidth. We have a published, workable standard that everyone has access to.
Look how much time the Esperantists spend quibbling over c, g, h, s and j
(which have circumflex versions) and u, which has a breve version.
Esperantists have been arguing about these little letters for over a hundred
years. It's divisive, and I hope the matter will drop.
Ken Beesley
