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

I can think of a good reason for mixed case romanization, and that is
for the purpose of "self-transcribing fonts", that is, any sound that is
written in the "native" writing system with one character would be
written with one character in the romanization. Sometimes, e.g., "C"
instead of "ch" would make sense for that reason. But I agree that for
æsthetics, a romanization with familiar use of capitalization is
preferable. Which is another reason why mixed case may have been
selected for Klingon :).

Sincerely,
- Aaron Grahn
þ

Ph.D. wrote:

>Paul Bennett wrote:
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>>Carsten Becker wrote:
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>>>That's why I don't like Klingon romanization.
>>>
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>>Pet peeve. There's no reason Klingon needs mixed case:
>>
>>a b ch d e gh kh i j l m n ng o p q qh r s t tl u v y w '
>>
>>Even that's needless, but it's a heck of an improvement, IMO.
>>
>>A less-redundant scheme is:
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>>a b c d e g k i j l m n ng o p q x r s t tl u v y w '
>>
>>I'm not sure I'm as big a fan of that, though.
>>
>>
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>This has been discussed on this list before.
>
>I don't like mixed-case romanizations either. But the reasoning
>is said to be that the lowercase letters are pronounced close to
>their usual values in English. The capital letters are quite different.
>They were meant to serve as a guide to the actors who would be
>speaking Klingon in the movies. The capital letters mean Warning:
>these letters are not pronounced as in English!
>
>I still don't like it.
>
>--Ph. D.
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