Bangla to pIqaD Klingon: changing letters cannot replace translating participant relationships
The target script represents Klingon rather than Bangla sounds
The University of Texas describes Bangla as an alphasyllabary with consonants carrying an inherent vowel and signs modifying that vowel. Its examples কি and কো show how dependent signs participate in a syllable’s spelling. pIqaD does not provide a corresponding set of Bangla syllable signs.
The Klingon Language Institute describes a community mapping between Klingon sounds and the pIqaD character set, alongside Marc Okrand’s Latin writing system. Selecting pIqaD should therefore produce Klingon language expressed through that mapping, rather than the Bangla source sounded out with decorative replacement characters. The Latin forms below explain target grammar without claiming that Latin letters themselves are the pIqaD output.
An owner expression changes its grammatical position
Dimock, Bhattacharji, and Chatterjee present Bangla আমার as my, preceding the possessed expression. KLI’s family lesson describes possessive suffixes, with different first-person forms according to whether the possessed referent is capable of speech. The target relationship can consequently appear at the noun’s end instead of as a separate preceding word.
The suffix -wI' marks my with a speech-capable referent, while the corresponding non-speaking-object form ends in j. A Bangla possessive does not announce this target classification by its own shape. Correct pIqaD letters would not repair an ownership suffix chosen for the wrong noun category.
A human counting classifier is not that possessive category
The Bangla course distinguishes classifiers used for humans from more general counting forms. This provides a source distinction, but its purpose is counting. Klingon’s possessive choice described by KLI concerns the possessed referent’s capacity for speech. The two grammatical systems cannot be equated just because familiar human examples often fall together.
KLI also distinguishes possession expressed through a pronoun suffix from a construction explicitly naming the possessor. HoD SoS means the captain’s mother, without adding a redundant third-person possessive suffix. A Bangla sentence naming an owner therefore requires a different target structure from one saying his or her, even when the same family member is meant.
Reading direction does not follow the characters’ appearance
KLI records a left-to-right horizontal convention for pIqaD. A Bangla reader’s usual left-to-right direction does not require reversal on entering this target script. Nor should the absence of familiar Bangla vowel signs be repaired by inserting extra characters: the target mapping represents a different sound inventory.
The Bangla script guide explains that one visible conjunct can contain multiple consonants, and that vowel signs can appear around their associated consonant. Those source facts show why visual character counting is a poor measure of translated completeness. In a pIqaD result, the relevant checks are whether the intended Klingon word and its grammatical components are represented, including the selected possessive relationship. A glyph-by-glyph comparison against the source cannot establish that relationship.
Language references