Klingon alphabets

pIqaD; 
Type	Alphabet
Languages	tlhIngan Hol (Klingon)
Direction	Left-to-right
ISO 15924	Piqd, 293
Unicode range	CSUR U+F8D0..U+F8FF

Klinzhai or Mandel script;
Type	Alphabet – Latin cipher
Languages	Klingonaase?

Last updated April 15, 2019

Klingon alphabets are fictional alphabets used in the Star Trek movies and television shows to write the Klingon language.

Star Trek is an American space opera media franchise based on the science fiction television series created by Gene Roddenberry. The first television series, simply called Star Trek and now referred to as "The Original Series", debuted in 1966 and aired for three seasons on NBC. It followed the interstellar adventures of Captain James T. Kirk and his crew aboard the starship USS Enterprise, a space exploration vessel built by the United Federation of Planets in the 23rd century. The Star Trek canon includes The Original Series, an animated series, five spin-off television series, the film franchise, and further adaptations in several media.

The Klingon language, sometimes called Klingonese, is the constructed language spoken by the fictional Klingons in the Star Trek universe.

The Klingon Dictionary (TKD) is a book by Marc Okrand describing the Klingon language. First published in 1985 and then again with an addendum in 1992, it includes pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. It has sold more than three hundred thousand copies and has been translated into five languages.

Writing is a medium of human communication that represents language and emotion with signs and symbols. In most languages, writing is a complement to speech or spoken language. Writing is not a language, but a tool used to make languages be read. Within a language system, writing relies on many of the same structures as speech, such as vocabulary, grammar, and semantics, with the added dependency of a system of signs or symbols. The result of writing is called text, and the recipient of text is called a reader. Motivations for writing include publication, storytelling, correspondence, record keeping and diary. Writing has been instrumental in keeping history, maintaining culture, dissemination of knowledge through the media and the formation of legal systems.

The Astra Image Corporation designed the symbols (currently used to "write" Klingon) for Star Trek: The Motion Picture , although these symbols are often incorrectly attributed to Michael Okuda.^[1] They based the letters on the Klingon battlecruiser hull markings (three letters) first created by Matt Jeffries, and on Tibetan writing because the script had sharp letter forms—used as an allusion to the Klingons' love for bladed weapons.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture is a 1979 American science fiction film directed by Robert Wise and based on the television series of the same name created by Gene Roddenberry, who also served as its producer. It is the first installment in the Star Trek film series, and stars the cast of the original television series. The film is set in the year 2271, when a mysterious and immensely powerful alien cloud known as V'Ger approaches Earth, destroying everything in its path. Admiral James T. Kirk assumes command of the recently refitted Starship USS Enterprise, to lead it on a mission to save the planet and determine V'Ger's origins.

Michael Okuda is an American graphic designer best known for his work on Star Trek.

In the Star Trek franchise, the Klingon Empire makes use of several classes of starships. As the Klingons are portrayed as a warrior culture, driven by the pursuit of honor and glory, the Empire is shown to use warships almost exclusively and even their support ships, such as troop transports and colony ships, are armed for battle. This contrasts with the exploration and research vessels used by Starfleet, the protagonists of the franchise. The first Klingon ship design used in The Original Series, the D7-class battlecruiser, was designed by Matt Jefferies to evoke a shape akin to that of a manta ray, providing a threatening and instantly recognizable form for viewers. The configuration of Jefferies's design featured a bulbous forward hull connected by a long boom to a wing-like main hull with the engine nacelles mounted on each wingtip. Though a variety of Klingon ships have appeared in Star Trek, their design generally conforms to this style. Most Klingon vessels were physically built as scale models, although later computer-generated imagery was used to create the models. In recent years, many of the original studio models have been sold at auctions.

KLI pIqaD

The KLI version of the pIqaD alphabet was created by an anonymous source at Paramount, who based the alphabet on letters seen in the show. This source sent in the alphabet to the Klingon Language Institute, and the KLI uploaded it onto its Web site.^[2] The vast majority of Klingonists, however, still prefer the Latin alphabet.^[3]

Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film studio based in Hollywood, California, that has been a subsidiary of the American media conglomerate Viacom since 1994. Paramount is the fifth oldest surviving film studio in the world, the second oldest in the United States, and the sole member of the "Big Five" film studios still located in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Hollywood.

The Klingon Language Institute (KLI) is an independent organization located in Flourtown, Pennsylvania, United States. Its goal is to promote the Klingon language and culture.

The alphabet itself is quite simple: It contains twenty-six letters with a one-to-one grapheme-phoneme correspondence: that is, one letter represents one sound and one sound is written with one letter. The set also includes ten numerals. It is written from left to right, top to bottom like English. There is no actual punctuation; however, those that use punctuation with the alphabet, use Skybox punctuation symbols (see below).

The KLI pIqaD script is registered in the ConScript registry in the Private Use Area of Unicode.^[4]

Bing translate translates between many languages and Klingon, including the KLI pIqaD script.^[5] Bing currently^{[ when? ]} uses a private use script code of "Qaak" for pIqaD instead of the official ISO 15924 script code "Piqd".^[6]

Google provides a Klingon language search interface.^[7]

ConScript Unicode Registry

In September 1997, Michael Everson made a proposal for encoding KLI pIqaD in Unicode based on the Linux kernel source code (specifically "Documentation/unicode.txt" by H. Peter Anvin).^[8] The Unicode Technical Committee rejected the Klingon proposal in May 2001 on the grounds that research showed almost no use of the script for communication, and the vast majority of the people who did use Klingon employed the Latin alphabet by preference.^[3] A modified version of the Linux kernel allocation for pIqaD in the Private Use Area of Unicode was added to the ConScript Unicode Registry (U+F8D0 to U+F8FF) by Michael Everson.^[4] Since then several fonts using that encoding have appeared, and software for typing in pIqaD has become available. Existing text in Romanization can easily be converted to pIqaD also. Bing translator can translate between pIqaD and Latin forms.^[9]

If a ConScript-compliant font is installed, the following PUA text should display:



Heghlu’meH QaQ jajvam.

"Today is a good day to die."

The following is a pangram:



qajunpaQHeylIjmo’ batlh DuSuvqang charghwI’ ’It.

"Because of your apparent audacity the depressed conqueror is willing to fight you."

Klingon^[1]^[2] ConScript Unicode Registry code chart
	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	A	B	C	D	E	F
U+F8Dx																
U+F8Ex										
U+F8Fx																
Notes 1. ^ As of 1997-02-14 version 2. ^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

Earlier variations

Until the Klingon Language Institute promoted a standardized alphabet for Klingon there were previous variations used primarily for decorative effect. These variants were never adopted by the Klingon speaking community and aren't used in modern Klingon.

Skybox pIqaD

The Klingon pIqaD according to Skybox Klingonalphabet.GIF — The Klingon pIqaD according to Skybox

The KLI adapted version of pIqaD utilizes the character set originally assembled by author Thomas E. Scheuer in his publication "Mortas-te-Kaase - the Death's Hand Battle Fleet" fan organization group operations manual (compiled, written, illustrated and published by author Thomas E. Scheuer from 1989–1994) which the author and founder of the KLI later became a member of, and learned of the MTK character assemblage and membership booklet designations, isn't the only mapping of Klingon letters. The Astra Image letters as released in the "Mortas-te-Kaase" were taken and used in the Paramount-endorsed Bitstream font pack. They were used to make a font with ten letters of the English alphabet: "e" to "n" being represented by the ten different klingon letters. This font itself has been used by the Star Trek production team when creating Klingon graphics; however it is still used only as random gibberish on the shows. Dr. Schoen would often refer inquiries to Thomas Scheuer as he was still a student of the Klingon language at the time. The Mortas-te-Kaase organisation was also in very close contact with linguist Marc Okrand, who was also an active member of MTK and would often release exclusive additional words and phrases through the regular publications of the organisation via their newsletter "veS QonoS". Scheuer was never credited however, in any of Dr. Schoen's works or publications, and thus following commercial usage was not credited properly either. A copy of the original release as photocopied from MTK member manual is displayed at the right. (See also the MTK 1990 Klin-Kon flier utilizing the MTK pIqaD)

The trading card company Skybox used this font when they created the Klingon language cards in their Star Trek: The Next Generation trading card collection ^{[ year needed ]}. The Klingon cards themselves detail aspects of Klingon culture and feature pIqaD text and a transliteration and translation provided by Marc Okrand. Some of these cards, notably S7, S8, and S9, feature pIqaD, which corresponds to the Latin transcription. Other known cards include S19 and S20 (which contain belittling references to Blockbuster, probably an allusion to Blockbuster Video) the season seven card selection s37, s38 and s39 (which featured no actual tlhIngan Hol, but only English and on card S39 Latin, written in the Skybox alphabet), and finally, the Checklist cards for each season's set of cards had the word cards written in Klingon on them when listing the above-mentioned cards.

The script is written in horizontal lines running from left to right, top to bottom, just like English. Klingon can be written with spaces between words (a word being defined as any noun, verb or leftover, plus any prefixes and suffixes attached to it) and punctuation. When this is the case, two punctuation marks are used:

An "up-turned triangle" with a function similar to a comma, semi-colon or colon.
A "down-turned" triangle with a function similar to a full stop, question mark or exclamation mark.

The triangular punctuation marks have been accepted into the common usage of the KLI pIqaD (see above).

Klingon can also be written with no spaces or punctuation at all; this form is more common on the TV shows. As in English, Klingon text can be left-justified, center-justified, or right-justified, and written in vertical columns on banners.

Due to its nature, the "Skybox" Alphabet is ill-suited to writing Klingon, in that ambiguity in the alphabet is apparent, so different words are spelled the same way; these are homographs. The heartiest commendations and the gravest insults could be written identically; however, context would go a long way to disambiguating homographs.

Mandel script

The Klinzhai alphabet Klinzhai alphabet.GIF — The Klinzhai alphabet

A third script, known as the Klinzhai or Mandel script, was included in The U.S.S. Enterprise Officer's Manual (1980). It holds more closely to the D7 battlecruiser hull markings and is also loosely based upon the conceptual art of Matt Jeffries, TOS set designer.

Its letters map to various letters and digraphs of English, but they have no relation to Marc Okrand's Klingon language. Like the other two alphabets, it is probably written in the same direction as English.

Some fans have suggested this alphabet could be used to write Klingonaase in its native form.^{[ citation needed ]}

In 1989, a fan by the name of David Christensen of Seattle, Wa., developed the first computer text font based on the Mandel script, prior to there being font software, meaning the font was built entirely in ResEdit.

Wikipedia logo

Wikipedia's logo used from 2003 until 2010

A pIqaD r () using the Code2000 font was used in the upper right corner of the Wikipedia globe logo from 2003 until 2010. It was replaced with the Ethiopic syllable wə (ው) in the May 2010 redesign of the logo.

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References

↑ Symbols attributed to Okuda: the Klingon Language Institute's Klingon FAQ (edited by d'Armond Speers), question 2.13 by Will Martin (August 18, 1994). Symbols incorrectly attributed to Okuda: KLI founder Lawrence M. Schoen's "On Orthography" (PDF) Archived 2006-12-08 at the Wayback Machine ., citing J. Lee's "An Interview with Michael Okuda" in the KLI's journal HolQed 1.1 (March 1992), p. 11. Symbols actually designed by Astra Image Corporation: Michael Everson's Proposal....^[2].
↑ http://www.kli.org/about-klingon/writing-klingon
1 2 The Unicode Consortium (August 14, 2001). "Approved Minutes of the UTC 87 / L2 184 Joint Meeting".
1 2 Michael Everson (January 15, 2004). "Klingon: U+F8D0 - U+F8FF".
↑ Microsoft (November 25, 2015). "Klingon pIqaD use on Bing translate".
↑ "Microsoft Translator Language Codes". June 2016.
↑ "Google search interface using Klingon".
↑ Michael Everson (September 18, 1997). "Proposal to encode Klingon in Plane 1 of ISO/IEC 10646-2".
↑ "Bing Translator". December 25, 2014.

External links

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[1] Symbols attributed to Okuda: the Klingon Language Institute's Klingon FAQ (edited by d'Armond Speers), question 2.13 by Will Martin (August 18, 1994). Symbols incorrectly attributed to Okuda: KLI founder Lawrence M. Schoen's "On Orthography" (PDF) Archived 2006-12-08 at the Wayback Machine ., citing J. Lee's "An Interview with Michael Okuda" in the KLI's journal HolQed 1.1 (March 1992), p. 11. Symbols actually designed by Astra Image Corporation: Michael Everson's Proposal....^[2].

[2] ttp://www.kli.org/about-klingon/writing-klingon

[unicode-3] 1 2 The Unicode Consortium (August 14, 2001). "Approved Minutes of the UTC 87 / L2 184 Joint Meeting".

[F8D0-4] 1 2 Michael Everson (January 15, 2004). "Klingon: U+F8D0 - U+F8FF".

[5] Microsoft (November 25, 2015). "Klingon pIqaD use on Bing translate".

[6] "Microsoft Translator Language Codes". June 2016.

[7] "Google search interface using Klingon".

[8] Michael Everson (September 18, 1997). "Proposal to encode Klingon in Plane 1 of ISO/IEC 10646-2".

[9] "Bing Translator". December 25, 2014.

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