[778] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: `i` v. `I` (was: Re: A difficult sentence)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Fri May 7 16:10:45 1993
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
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
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: Captain Krankor <krankor@codex.prds.cdx.mot.com>
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: Fri, 7 May 93 14:40:46 -0400
> I appreciate the need to stay with the established source information; but
>others also have complained about difficulty reading words containing 'l'
>(lowercase 'lima') and 'I' (uppercase 'india') together. I suspect that the
>Star Trek studio's typewriters, like some, had very wide serifs on their 'l',
>'I', etc (to hide the gappiness in all-letters-the-same-width typescript fonts
>of words such as 'militia' that have several narrow letters), and thus the
>inventor of Klingon got away with it when he decided to type 'I' uppercase to
>remind English-speaking actors not to pronounce it as ordinary English short
>'i'; but on my PC the letters have wide verticals and the only difference
>between 'l' and 'I' is <one> tiny extra pixel projecting from the top right
>corner of the letter. And see the list of phrases near the end of TKD, where
>Klingon text is typeset in sans-serif with 'l' and 'I' identical.
None the less, I is the standard. As Letty has pointed out, in
truth, the nature of Klingon is such that there is pretty much never
any ambiguity over which letter it has to be. The only time I've
*ever* see anybody mix them up is when you see people who don't know
the language at all trying to transcribe the cheat sentences in the
appendix. But changing the case makes it *significantly* harder for
*everyone* to read, because the words don't look right anymore, and,
again, the look and shape of words is key in word recognition once
you get beyond the sound-out-each-letter stage.
--Krankor
