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

Hallo!

Damn "Reply-To:" header.  It was meant for the list, but went to Ray.
So here it is.

R A Brown wrote:

> Jeffrey Jones wrote:
> [snip]
>
> > Also at some point this thread started to get a whiff of Esperanto
> > accusative N to it. Probably at the start, since Klingon is a done
> > deal, like Esperanto.
>
> Well, yes - or perhaps even Esperanto's diacritics. I guess most of us
> could come up with orhographies for E-o & Klingon that avoided
> diacritics and mixed-case. But we know it ain't going to happen. And,
> indeed, why should it?
>
> Surely, the Esperantine diacritics & the accusative -n are the business
> of the Esperanto community? Likewise, Klingon orthography is IMO the
> concern of Dr Marc Okrand & the Klingon community.
Well put.  While I am of the personal opinion that the Klingon
orthography is outstandingly ugly, and a less ugly orthography could
be easily devised, this is not my business.  It is also not relevant
that I consider the Klingon language as a whole ugly and badly
designed - Okrand designed it the way it is, there is a community
around it, and any call to "reform" the language and its spelling
is meaningless.  If you don't like Klingon, you need not concern
yourself with it - just go ahead and design a conlang that pleases
you.  I have seen many conlangs (here, and elsewhere) which I did
not like much - but I prefer to ignore them, and can accept them
the way they are.

Designing your own conlang is a much more laudable and creative
pursuit than grooming someone else's conlang for fleas.  The latter
is what people over there on AUXLANG are doing all the time.  We can
do better.

> Indeed, surely the example of Ido (which broke from Esperanto in 1907)
> shows that the result of  such reforms to 'done deals' is likely to be
> simply the creation of another conlang?
This is typical of the auxlang movement.  Someone proposes an auxlang;
someone else suggests modifications to it in order to render it more
appropriate for its noble purpose; a part of the audience applauds,
while another part rejects the modification proposal, and voilà,
the auxlang has split into two that are deadly enemies of each other.
Repeat ad nauseam.  That is not the game I wish to play, and that's
one of the reasons why I am an artlanger and not an auxlanger.
(Another reason is that artlangs allow for building more linguistically
interesting features into them.)

> Now, if you really like reforming orthographies etc, you could always
> propose a 5th version of Cornish to add to the four (at the last count)
> existing competing versions :-)
;-)

Greetings,

Jörg.