Re: CHAT: t-shirt

At 02:03 PM 09/26/2000 +0100, you wrote:
>Jörg Rhiemeier wrote:
>
>> 100% agreed.  None of them is better known to the general public than
>> Esperanto, sure, but it is pretty well known (at least among those who
>> take an interest in fantasy and science fiction) that Tolkien invented
>> languages and that the Klingon language exists.  These three classics
>> must not miss!
>
>Tolkien, yes. Esperanto, maybe. But please, not Klingon, please! I hate it,
>It's nonsensical and hideous. Enough of the rant, here's why I hate the damn
>thing:
>
tlhIngan Hol DamuSmo' yIHoH'egh!  8+)

I'ts foolish to argue with tastes, but anyway...

>1) the orthography. The weird phonology doesn't bother me much- it's not
>very likely mind you, but I hate the orthography. The most glaringly stupid
>thing is the vowels. Klingon has five vowel sounds, /a/, /e/, /I/, /o/ and
>/u/. That is exactly how they are represented. To someone who knows the IPA,
>the use of I for /I/ makes some sense, but since most Trekkies AREN'T
>linguists, what's the point? Why not a, e, i, o, u? Why represent retroflex
>d with D? why not just use d, rather than mixing cases where it's not
>useful? How come we have the voiceless/voiced pair /x/, /Q/ represented by H
>and gh? why not kh and gh or H and G, or K and G? Why is /K/ represented by
>a trigraph (tlh) when there are other, easier, solutions, like L, lh or tl?
>
Recall that Klingon was written mainly for entertainment, not for rigorous
linguistic scrutiny.  The capital letters are used to remind the average
(English) speaker that the particular phoneme is not pronounced as one would
expect. The di- and trigraphs I assume are there to avoid using other weird
solutions.  At work also was the conscious intent to make Klingon deliberately
break language conventions.

As an aside, one's like or dislike of using capital letters is entirely a
matter of taste.  Looked at purely as symbols, what difference is there,
for example, between a, A or @?  The orthography by now looks perfectly
natural to me. In fact, I find myself unconsciously using it in everyday life
(There is a street in our town that I consistently misspell as SaraH).

>2) OK, the phonology. It has too many holes in it. Why are the velars the
>only fricatives to make a voiced/voiceless distinction? Where are the velar
>stops? Come to think of it, where are the uvular fricatives? Why are there
>only dental affticates?
>
>                labial  dental  rtroflx velar   uvular  glottal
>stops voiced    b               D               q
> voiceless      p       t                       Q       '
>fricatives (vs)                 S       H
>(vd)            v                       gh
>affricates              ch
>                        j
>approximants    w       y
>laterals                        l, r    tlh
>
The standard answer is that Klingon is spoken by aliens.  Their vocal
equipment need not resemble humans.

>3) the lexicon. None of the words seem to have any relationship too each
>other, they appear to have been made up at random (I know they were, but
>this looks like it) like ghop and ruQ, which mean hand and manually,
>respectively. They bear no relation to each other or any other word.
>
This was a quibble of mine early on, but I've learned to live with it.
Many of the existing terms are being expanded in logical ways, as time
goes on.

>4) urgh!
>
Klingon has several advantages over other conlangs, in my opinion:

1. Installed user base.  If you want someone to converse with in
Klingon or to read your work, such people can be found!

2. The speakers of klingon are more interesting to me.  I used to
belong to the local Esperanto club, but eventually quit because the
members were just too geeky for me.  True, Trekkers and KAG members
are not exactly normal, but I find them weird in a much more
congenial way.

3. Klingon is relatively easy to learn.  No harder than Esperanto,
surely (except for vocabulary), and lots easier than, say, Lojban.

4. Klingon has a well-developed culture to go along with it.  Although
I am not a "Klingon", I enjoy the mythology.


vaj tlhIngan Hol yIghoj!

-- Terry

http://www.geocities.com/teresh_2000