Cardassian Alphabet - Part 2

In my last post, I told you about the basic workings of the Cardassian alphabet, this time around, I'm going to tell you how it all strings together (I promise there will be no big, complex words in this one).

Cardassian is written in both horizontal and vertical lines. The direction of reading is variable, although there are some typical indicators within a line of text and a paragraph that give the reader clues as the reading direction:

Cardassian text incorporates 3 primary punctuation marks and one secondary mark: for want of better names, I will call them small circle, large circle, paragraph circle and large dot.

• The small circle and large circle resemble a small and large circle respectively, outlined. There use is to generally give the reader a general sense of direction in reading a paragraph: text is read away from a small circle and toward a large circle.  
• The paragraph circle does what it's name says, marks paragraphs. usually, although by no means exclusively, it marks the beginning of a text.
• The large dot is used to cap the end of lines.

Cardassian text is usually overlaid over a central line, however it can be written without this central line where necessary. When this is the case in a paragraph, it's usually because the written information is of secondary importance, or is an annotation to the main line of text.

The overall writing direction for Cardassian is preferably from top to bottom, however, bottom to top is not uncommon.  Finally, letters can be written in a reverse direction; flipped horizontally in relation to the letters in a text, this serves a similar function to italics in English.

In the final part (which I promise will be shorter), I'll discuss numbers.

Cardassian Alphabet - Part 1

 

This is the first of a two part post about the Cardassian alphabet we have come up with here at LCARS 47. It is, to say the least, a bit complicated to explain, but I will try my best to keep it concise and understandable. So here goes...

In analyzing the the Cardassian text in Star Trek, I noticed several things of interest:

• There are a lot of rectangular letters...
• Some of the rectangular letters have one, two or three rectangles cut out of the top of them.
• One or two dots occur in texts frequently between the main rectangular letters.
• Text can run horizontally or vertically, left-to-right or right-to-left

All of this indicated that something a little more intricate than a simple alphabet was going on. I decided to look to Star Trek for examples of Cardassian words, names, and phrases to give me a clue about what kind of sounds a written language should be representing. There were very few actual Cardassian words to go on, but there was a large number of names of things, such as people, planets, ships, etc.. This gave me the clue that the phonology of Cardassian was as complex, of not more so than English.  

At this point I looked to inspiration in the other languages of the world, and noted with interest the Caucasian languages of South West Russia and the Caucasus Mountains. These languages (in particular the Northwest Caucasian languages) have very few vowels (usually just "ah" and "uh"), but very intricate consonant systems: the consonants have secondary articulations such as palatalization (pronouncing a consonant simultaneously with a "y" sound), labialization (rounding the lips simultaneously to give a "w" sound), and pharyngealization (a tightening in the throat). These secondary articulations affect the two basic vowel sounds to give the languages more actual vowel sounds than there appears to be at first glance.

Taking all this into account, I decided that Cardassian phonology should be based on the Caucasian languages. Based on all of this data, I can break down the Cardassian alphabet as follows:

• There are 37  basic consonants, many more than English.
• Cardassians has a three-way distinction between stops consonants and affricates: voiceless & voiced (like in English) and ejective (pronounced with a glottal stop;  the sound in-between the "uh" and "oh" in "uh-oh").
• There are only 3 base vowels: a schwa or "uh", which is unwritten; "a", written with one dot; and "ah", written with two dots.
• Most of the consonants can have secondary articulations: palatalization, indicated with one rectangle in the upper corner of a letter; labialization, indicated with two rectangles; and pharyngealization, indicated with three rectangles. 
• The secondary consonant articulations effect the pronunciation of the base vowels: after palatals, "uh" becomes "i", "a" becomes "e" and "ah" becomes "ae"; after labials, "uh" becomes "u", "a" becomes "o" and "ah" becomes "oh".
• Pharyngealized consonants don't affect the pronunciation of the basic vowels too significantly, but they do give the syllable a slightly creaky sound.
• The semi vowel consonants, "y" and "w" affect the vowels the same way the secondary articulations do.
• At the end of a syllable, "y" and "w" lengthen and alter the preceding vowel.

In part two, I will discuss writing direction, paragraphs & punctuation, and anything else I've left out of here, because this is beginning to turn into a novel!

For Cardassia!

The Written Klingon Issue

A lot Klingons the world over have pointed out to us that the Klingon text in HaSta 'elqarIS is not the Klingon Language Institute's pIqaD, or alphabet, but is instead the "Skybox pIqaD", an alphabet used on Fleer/Skybox Star Trek trading cards in the early 1990s.  The Skybox pIqaD uses the "Okuda Ten", a subset of ten Klingon Glyphs which form the bulk of all Klingon text seen on screen.

It was pointed out that this usage was wrong, and that the KLI pIqaD should be used instead; in part because the Klingon speaking community has adopted KLI pIqaD as it's "Klingon writing system" of choice, because it is easy to read, fairly simple to write, and has a one to one sound to grapheme correspondence.

While we appreciate this view, we are sticking with the decision to continue using Skybox pIqaD (for want of a better name), for several reasons:

• The "Okuda ten" are canon, in as far as the vast majority of all Klingon text seen on screen actually only contains those ten letters.
• Conversely, on an on screen basis, the KLI pIqaD is categorically not canon, containing letters that seem made up.
• Although on screen Klingon text was just random letters, a way was found to make those random letters say something (at least on those trading cards), which became the basis for the written Klingon script today.
• The upcoming release of the book "Federation, the First 150 Years", uses the Skypox pIqaD in it's artwork to write a Klingon document, showing that we're not the only one's using this alphabet.
• Early Arabic and the Younger Futhark Viking runic alphabet were fairly ambiguous in writing their respective languages (insomuch as having far more sounds than actual letters in thier alphabet, like Klingon).
• Scotty said "Damage control is easy, reading Klingon... that's hard!"  Go figure...

I hope that this clears up our stance on the Klingon script, and why we are going with the more canon option. We would ask our users to remember, this is just a novelty, a bit of fun.

So remember, Qapla'!

Project HaSta 'elqarIS Announcement

For all our Klingon users, we're pleased to announce yet another app development. This time, you've guessed it, a full Klingon computer with real written Klingon (no English).

I've been toying with the idea for a while now (during the early development of Anticuus), and now I've been able to lay down some foundations, I'm happy enough with it to reveal it to you. Development starts in September and should be up for an early beta release around November

Qapla'

Romulan Database module • Romulan Alphabet

Eleanor asked me to map out a Romulan alphabet for an upcoming database module in Prolixus.  So I started jotting down some notes based on screenshots from various Star trek productions.  After a few revisions I came up with a final design for a Romulan alphabet that followed the designs and layout of the script as seen in the show. 

The idea for how the script works was inspired by the Arabic and Hebrew alphabets; in particular the square shapes of Hebrew reminded me of Romulan glyphs.  It was for this reason, as well a need to keep texts from growing too cumbersome, that I decided to incorporate the rule about dropping vowels within words. 

The script is written both horizontally and vertically within the show, so it seemed only right that this was included in the reference image.  I chose to have the script go from right-to-left, in horizontal mode again, as a direct inspiration from Arabic and Hebrew, and also, because it seemed more alien.  The vertical script running in columns, from top-to-bottom, left-to-right, is a direct consequence of rotating the script in horizontal mode, 90° counter-clockwise.  Something similar is observed in the real world with the Mongolian alpahabet.

The alphabet as it appears here is based on canon (no official translation of the glyphs appears in canon, but we think this works).

Jolan Tru!

Prolixus 6.2 Database Modules

As you're probably aware, we're in the process of dumbing more info into the Federation Database. We've now added an option to select from one of several alien databases too. To the right, is a screenshot from the Klingon database (original Klingon language table design by our very own Greig (RunicCode)). On release, there will be only two databases available, Cardassian and Klingon but more will follow in the form of plugins. There's even a brand new Planetary Classification module (bottom left), because let's face it, it's easy to get your class H and class L mixed up.

If you want to see some more screenshots, have a look at the growing album here (broken link removed). A big thanks to the editors of Memory Alpha for the text used in the majority of the database and thanks to Bernd Schneider of Ex Astris Scienta for the reference material.

As always, if you guys have any suggestions for the database, email me, drop by our new Facebook page or leave a comment below.