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

Jeffrey Jones wrote:
>
> I'm not sure which msg in this thread to reply to ....
>
> B. Garcia <madyaas@...> wrote:
> >
> >On 08/09/05, Ph.D. <phil@...> wrote:
> >
> >> 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!
> >
> >Well, that's fine of course for actors, but I wonder why it should've
> >ever been considered for print publications and the like? Klingon
> >Latin alphabet looks like what teenagers write when they're in chat
> >rooms:
> >
> >OmG LIke DiD yoU SeE WhAt SHe wRotE thE OthER DaY?
>
> I shouldn't be offended, but I still _feel_ offended, since at least one
> my orthographies uses mixed case: 'Yemls uses all 52 lower and
> upper case characters.
Why feel offended? There are lots of conlangy things I like that others
don't, and vice versa. It wouldn't be very interesting if we all thought
alike.

If you're using all fifty-two upper- and lower-case characters, you
have good reasons for that orthography. The point about Klingon is
that (with the exception of q and Q) each letter is only used once,
either in uppercase or lowercase. (The choice of upper i and lower
L was especially bad.)


> 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.
I'm not sure what you mean here, but I admit that I'm a pedant when
it comes to English.

--Ph. D.