Re: Campaign for rational Klingon romanisation (was Re: Phoneme system for my still-unnamed "Language X")

On 9/8/05, B. Garcia <madyaas@...> wrote:
> Well, you know how it goes with SciFi fans. Anything written
> officially becomes cannon.
That's "canon".  Or "cannon fodder for nit-pickers", perhaps. :)  But
it's an overstatement.  There is a huge zone of things which are
written - in official, Paramount/Lucas/whoever publications - that are
nevertheless not canon.  The usual rule for televised or cinematic
adventures is this: if it's not onscreen, it's not canon.  Novels
(even adaptations of onscreen episodes), technical manuals, etc,
occupy a sort of in-between category which has come to be known as an
Expanded Universe.  Expanded-U things are reasonably safe to consider
"real" (within the confines of the fictional setting, natch) but may
be overridden at any time by new genuine canon.

It's also true that Klingonists, in general, couldn't care less about
Star Trek canon.  They do, however, care about Klingon canon.  Which
has an even simpler rule: if it didn't come directly from Dr. Marc
Okrand, it's not canon.  Even if it appeared onscreen in an official
Paramount Picture.  Of course, Dr. Okrand has retroactiveliy canonized
what were originally pretty glaring bloopers, usually by adding
another dialectical variation in pronunciation or vocabulary.

> It's too bad Okrand didn't come out with a
> scheme for everyone else. But, then again he probably didn't think it
> would become anything big either.
The target audience for The Klingon Dictionary was casual American
Trek fans - so the same assumptions that led to the convention for
actors made sense there.  I don't think he ever envisioned a scholarly
journal dedicated to his language.   :) Even so, the orthography takes
some getting used to, but it quickly becomes second nature, and things
miscapitalized, even where not ambiguous, nevertheless look wrong.

--
Mark J. Reed <markjreed@...>