Re: Klingon

From: Philippe Verdy (verdy_p@wanadoo.fr)
Date: Thu Jan 15 2004 - 13:16:51 EST

  • Next message: Mark E. Shoulson: "Re: Klingon"

    ----- Original Message -----
    From: "Michael Everson" <everson@evertype.com>
    To: <unicode@unicode.org>
    Sent: Thursday, January 15, 2004 6:28 PM
    Subject: Re: Klingon

    > At 18:06 +0100 2004-01-15, Philippe Verdy wrote:
    > >From: <jcowan@reutershealth.com>
    > > > Michael Everson scripsit:
    > > > >
    > > > > yIjachQo'. vItlhob.
    > > >
    > >> Demonstrating once again that the One True Script for Klingon is
    Latin.
    > >
    > >Not really: look at how uppercase letters are used: case mapping, which
    is
    > >quite safe in languages written with the Latin script, completely breaks
    the
    > >Klingon text...
    > >
    > >Michael did not write: "Yijachqo'. Vitlhob."
    >
    > Many Latin-script languages write capital letters
    > in non-initial positions. Irish does quite
    > regularly: "an tSín" 'China'. Breton does
    > sometimes. It is common in transliterations of
    > Tibetan.

    I admit this exists, I don't think it's a good idea to use such weak
    conventions, which are justified only by the fact that one is technically
    constrained to use a restricted subset of Latin. If people could use more
    distinctive letters in Latin, such caveats would be avoided.

    For Breton, I don't agree with you. Even if Breton has the trigraph <c'h>
    considered as one letter, and whose appropriate titlecase is the trigraph
    <C'H>, not the trigraph <C'h>. See "Aber Wrac'h", also written in uppercase
    "ABER WRAC'H". Words starting by the trigraph letter <c'h> are rare in
    Breton, but even in that case, I see NO use of such "abuse" of Latin letter
    case other than a way to represent a missing diacritic or a missing letter.

    > Of course, Philippe seems to be suggesting that the One True Script for
    Klingon is *not* Latin,
    > because he thinks that yIjachQo' is not Latin, while Yijach1o' is. Which
    is, well, incredible.

    No, I said that both are Latin, but they would be considered equal under
    case-insensitive searches, despite they are really coding distinct letters.
    For example the Klingon Mandel "Q" is mostly a Mandel "qH", but bot a simple
    Mandel "q", and is still distinct from Mandel "qh" (which is mostly like a
    French "r")...

    The presence of case distinctions as meaning strong primary letter
    distinctions in these conventions just denotes a missing diacritic or
    separate letter for the Latin transliteration...This is still a (very poor)
    transliteration system, with its imperfections, and as with other
    transliteration systems, it breaks the initial script design and semantic
    structure and is a clear sign that this is a plain separate script (as it
    was the intent of Tolkien when he created the script).



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