Klingon tagging (was: RE: Seeming hostility to conlang scripts?)

Doug Ewell via Unicode <[email protected]> Sat, 13 Jun 2026 18:04:47 +0000

Newsgroups	gmane.text.unicode.general
Message-ID	<SA5PR03MB840109DD37D85F82F59F600CCA192@SA5PR03MB8401.namprd03.prod.outlook.com>

Piotr Karocki wrote:

> By the way, this blogspot is marked as:
> <html dir="ltr" lang="en-US">
> Seems like language is incorrect :)

blogger.com, like many tools, probably defaults to "en-US" and the creators either couldn’t find the knob to change that to "tlh-Piqd" or didn’t think it was important.

The English-language parts of that blog (such as they are) are probably in "en" anyway rather than "en-US" (i.e. the use of English is not U.S.-specific), but that is unfortunately how most tools view language tags.

> Type: language
> Subtag: tlh
> Description: Klingon
> Description: tlhIngan Hol
> Added: 2005-10-16
>
> Type: script
> Subtag: Piqd
> Description: Klingon (KLI pIqaD)
> Added: 2016-01-04
>
> Type: grandfathered
> Tag: i-klingon
> Description: Klingon
> Added: 1999-05-26
> Deprecated: 2004-02-24
> Preferred-Value: tlh

As the latter entry says for itself, it’s deprecated and shouldn’t be used for new tagging. (Note the anomaly between the Deprecated date of "i-klingon", which goes back to the RFC 3066 days, and the Added date of 'tlh', which correlates to the introduction of RFC 4646.

> Further, we have ISO 15924 Information and documentation — Codes for
> the representation of names of scripts.

That’s where the BCP 47 subtag 'Piqd' comes from.

> And even unicode knows about Klingon:
> https://www.unicode.org/iso15924/iso15924.txt
> Piqd;293;Klingon (KLI pIqaD);klingon (pIqaD du KLI);;;2015-12-16

ISO 15924 is hosted on unicode.org, and Unicode is the Registration Authority, but there is a Joint Advisory Committee (https://www.unicode.org/iso15924/iso15924jac.html) that provides input into coding decisions.

In any event, there is a difference between recognizing that something is a script from an ISO 15924 standpoint and determining that it meets Unicode encoding standards. On the 15924 list, you will also find Cirth, Sarati, and Tengwar (but not sitelen pona, interestingly).

--
Doug Ewell, CC, ALB | Lakewood, CO, US | ewellic.org