[86051] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: Klingon orthography
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Doq)
Sat Jun 27 15:11:34 2009
From: Doq <doq@embarqmail.com>
To: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
In-Reply-To: <1D17D329-E7A3-421D-9C30-FC710DCBB266@evertype.com>
Date: Sat, 27 Jun 2009 15:09:43 -0400
Errors-to: tlhingan-hol-bounce@kli.org
Reply-to: tlhingan-hol@kli.org
I said what I meant. i didn't really need a translation.
Look at Cherokee. Sequoia came up with a hand-written script mostly
made of loops, imitating cursive English which he had looked at, but
couldn't read, and he took it to a typesetter and asked if he could
print this. The typesetter ignored what Sequoia did, except to reach
in his box and grab 89 characters (later dropping one, since two of
them were eventually discovered to be identical in sound) and randomly
assign them to each letter of the syllabary and those arbitrary
characters (normal roman characters set sometimes at unconventional
orientations) are now the official Cherokee alphabet.
Alphabets are arbitrary. Trying to apply rules from one language to
characters in a different language is an exercise in ignorance. You
are playing baseball with a golf club, commenting on what distaste you
feel for all these primitive wooden clubs and aluminum tubes the rest
of us are using.
You don't have my scorn. I reserve that for those who have earned it.
There aren't many. I consider it to be foolish to scorn those who are
merely annoying. ghIlab ghewmey yIbuSHa'.
I was not at my best in my earlier post, rather sleep deprived. After
a day at work, I spent the evening selecting dances and working out a
program for an evening of dance that a couple friends and I will be
calling for in a bit under a month, and I thought I'd just catch up on
e-mail before hitting the sack. I was quite surprised to see such a
large fraction of a hundred messages on this list, about half of which
you had written, all in the span of about two days. It seemed a bit
extreme. I'm glad there's discussion on the list, but, jeeze...
My point is that your self-appointed authority drives you to tell
other people what they meant to say, as if you are the only person
with the authority to explain to everyone how things really go. That
attitude fuels a lot of unpleasant e-mail on this list. I'm guilty of
it, and I genuinely apologize for participating in this folly.
Mark Okrand has authority on the language. The rest of us are fans,
theorists, and often blowhards. It's fun blowing hard, but there's a
balance to be striven for.
It's not really the quality of what you say. It's the stunning
quantity, repetition, failure to show any interest in listening to
anyone except to respond, explaining how each person is completely
wrong and you are completely right that inspires the sarcasm that you
misread as scorn.
Sarcasm, yes. Lighten up. Scorn, no. Lighten up.
Lighten up, in both quantity and quality, and you won't be in the
center of so much conflict.
Doq
On Jun 25, 2009, at 3:30 AM, Michael Everson wrote:
> On 25 Jun 2009, at 06:38, Doq wrote:
>
>> In the Klingon language, {q} and {Q} are different letters.
>
> Perhaps you mean "in the standard Latin orthography for Klingon as
> devised in 1985, q and Q are treated as separate letters". Or perhaps
> you mean "q and Q are used to indicate different phonemes".
>
> This is a question of character set technology, however, and the case-
> pair equivalence between these two characters is
>
>> Likely, you will respond by repeating yourself yet again, as if you
>> think we apparently didn't read the dozen or two previous posts
>> you've already made in one day on the topic.
>
> Gosh, thanks for your sarcasm and your scorn.
>
> Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/
>
>
>
>
