On Tue, 3 Jul 2018 at 16:30, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:

On 7/3/2018 5:44 AM, De'vID wrote:

The Latin-script writing system we use for Klingon is a phonetic transcription. We don't actually know how to "spell" anything in any native Klingon writing system.

Alas, that is no longer true. Thanks to the intervention of certain Klingonists, Klingon has appeared in decipherable writing on Star Trek: Discovery, in the one-to-one phonemic alphabet invented by another certain Klingonist. This alphabet is directly translatable to our Latin-letter transcription. We are stuck with this most boring of writing systems being on-screen canon, at least for the Discovery Klingons, and no explanation of why the in-universe compilers of The Klingon Dictionary had such a hard time understanding it.

Isn't it obvious? We're viewing the historical recordings/simulations of the USS Discovery through the universal translator, which has simplified written Klingon into a phonetic alphabet but retained a {pIqaD}esque appearance for flavour.

Also, we know that real Klingon isn't phonetic/phonemic. We just found out that Gorkon is written as if it were {ghorqon} and spoken (in Kirk's time) as if it were {ghorqan}, and B'Elanna's name is pronounced {beylana} but probably corresponds to a name which was originally {be'elanna} or something like that.

De'vID