Re: CHAT: t-shirt

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:

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?

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

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.

4) urgh!

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Go dtóga na púcaí do bheithígh!
                                      May the fairies take your livestock!
Dan Jones: www.geocities.com/yl_ruil/
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