Re: Fave Conlangs WAS: Silindion

Am 24.03.02, Christian Thalmann yscrifef:

> --- In conlang@y..., Padraic Brown <agricola@W...> wrote:
>
> > > >- Klingon is dead ugly and uses an exceptionally stupid notation
> > >
> > > But wasn't Klingon meant to be dead ugly and weird?
> >
> > It's no uglier than German or English.
>
> I must protest.
Matter of taste.

> And after all, Klingons are crude, loud and harsh, so their language
> had to be so as well.  Mark did a good job on that.
Ah, perhaps I should rephrase that to "American English".
===>>> ;^) <<<=== Look before you leap!

> > The "stupid" notation
> > was made for _mass_ appeal; not for linguists.
>
> I think both the ignorant masses and the linguists would have
> preferred a case-insensitive system, especially since it's so
> unnecessary.
Certainly the linguistically inclined would. The masses don't
know and, in general, don't care.

> I would understand Mark's decision to use I, E, D
> etc. if he used i, e, d for other sounds, but he didn't.
> Similarly, he uses q and Q, but neither k nor K.
Quite.

> The case-sensitive transliteration makes the use of written
> Klingon much more difficult (beginning a sentence with a lowercase
> letter just hurts) while making it harder for "Johnny Galacticon"
> to remember.
Easier than trying to add an IPA lesson to the front.

Mind you, I'm not saying it's the best of all systems. Danny
Weir just posted an ammendation that solves the problems
pretty well. I think that would have been just as good and just
as easy to learn for Mr Galacticon.

> How many misspellings of Qapla' have you seen on the web?  They're
> innumerable (únótime... one of the few words I know in Quenya! =).
Never looked. Then again, when most Klingons say it, it sounds
more like some kind of Rigelian Hiccup than anything else.

> The problem is: Any linguist could remember the rules (Klingon d and s
> are retroflex, k is uvular, q is an uvular affricate, e and i are
> lax etc...) without using capitals (D, S, q, Q, E, I respectively).
> Good old "Johnny Galacticon" will mispronounce them anyway -- even
> more so if the spelling looks weird in his eyes.
A problem it may be; but you still have to look at the market the
book it was meant for.

> All in all, the spelling causes a lot of discomfort for very little
> gain.
I won't disagree!

> Does anyone have an e-Mail address of Mark Okrand that he could
> forward to me?  I'd be interested in discussing the issue with him
> personally.
He used to cruise the Star Trek NGs (sorry, I don't recall the
group names). You could probably find the address there, if no
one here knows it.

> -- Christian Thalmann
Padraic.