Re: new Klingon spelling

On Sat, 3 Jan 2004, Andreas Johansson wrote:

> Quoting "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>:
>
> > On Fri, Jan 02, 2004 at 09:41:58PM -0500, Doug Dee wrote:
> > > The idea of using capitals to draw attention to unexpected sounds might be
> > > reasonable enough, but the implementation seems utterly random.
> >
> > Not at all.  Let's review.
> >
> > a       /A/             standard Romance value
>
> Is it? I don't speak any Romance language, but have heard most of them by
> know, and the /a/'s usually sounds more like [a] than [A]. Indeed, I've met
> hispanophones unable to tell [A:] from [o:].
I think what was meant was American interpretation thereof. (Incidentally,
there are occasions when an /A/ is borrowed from American English into
Australian English as /O/, even when this doesn't make sense (e.g. Las
Vegas, probably influenced by Los Angeles).)

> > q       /q/             This one is odd.  Should probably be capitalized;
> >                         perhaps Okrand was hoping its appearance without
> >                         usually having a following 'u' would be enough to
> >                         cause English speakers to stop and question, while
> >                         leaving <Q> available for the affricate?
>
> Many Westerners seem to automatically supply an 'u' after all 'q's.
Not to mention that regardless of how it's spelt, a /w/ is sometimes added
(e.g. Qantas /kwOnt@s/, an Australian airline and originally an acronym
for Queensland And Northern Teritory Airline Service; the a-as-/O/ (c.f.
quarantine /kwOr@n-/, what /wOt/) is more evidence of a blind w).

> I've seen
> **Al-Quaeda with vomit-inducing frequency the last few years, and the Chinese
IME, if they put a <u> in, they're going to get something else wrong too,
and make something like **Al Quida.

> dynasty-names 'Qin' and 'Qing' are regularly barabarized as **Quin and **Quing
> (the Swedish translation of Jan Wong's "Red China Blues" has 'q' and 'qu' in
> totally free variation; you even find 'Qinghai' and 'Quinghai' on the same
> page!). I could go on.
>
>                                                                Andreas
>
--
Tristan

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