Simplified Klingon ortography

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The original Klingon language romanisation system uses capital letters to denote some sounds of the language. Originally the capital letters were assigned to sounds which do not exist in English; the idea was to draw the actors’ attention to these sounds, so that they would remember to pronounce them correctly. In this article a simplified ortography more conducive to writing the language is suggested.

It is reasonable to change the letter for [ɖ] from D to d since there are no other d-like sounds in the language. Analogously we can also make the change S → s for the sound [ʂ].

In this new system affricates are represented by single capital letters. My justification for this unusual feature is to preserve the capital Q due to its iconicity. This however requires a new symbol for the voiceless velar fricative [x]: H → kh. Affricates in the new ortography are then:

• [t͡ɬ] tlh → T
• [t͡ʃ] ch → C
• [d͡ʒ] j → J
• [q͡χ] Q

Finally, the vowel [ɪ] ought to be written with a lowercase i. The capitalisation, I, is again a quirk of the original system and serves no linguistic purpose. Moreover the capital I (‘aye’) is easily confused with the lowercase l (‘ell’) in sans-serif fonts.