tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jun 16 13:41:44 1995
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: That's my name, don't use it up.
>Date: Fri, 16 Jun 1995 15:44:26 -0400
>Originator: [email protected]
>From: [email protected]
>As to the pronunciation.
>r'Hul = roll the r and suddenly stop, "hech" the H and blend it into the
><ul>. Use a lot of phlegm. This is based on the Russian "Ruchelle", a
>variation of Rachel. (There, now you know my secret identity.{{:-) >)
>There is no "u as in uh" in tlhIngan Hol, but "uh" is a glottal stop.
>That's why I used it.
Tricky. Basically using "r" as vowel, before the consonant '. Since I do
a lousy job trilling my r's anyway, I can't do much with this. Near as I
can see, it would tend to wind up sounding like "rI'Hul", much as the
Sanskrit vocalic .r is generally pronounced rI.
>I saw in TKD that, in there, the ' only shows up after vowels, y and w. But
>how else would you show the abrupt ending of a sound? i.e. Gr vs. Grrrrr.
Well, ' is a consonant. We know this because Okrand says that -oy is the
only suffix that starts with a vowel (Addendum, Section 3.3.1), and that
sometimes ' may be inserted to avoid vowel hiatus with a preceding final
vowel. If only -oy begins with a vowel, then -'egh much begin with a
consonant (Okrand's use of the terms in the first place indicates that
Klingon makes the distinction). No known Klingon word has an initial
consonant cluster, and r is also a consonant in Klingon. Me, I find the
cluster of r+'+H just about impossible without an epenthetic "I" somewhere,
so even allowing for a cluster it still winds up getting pronounced rI'Hul,
clusterless.
Now, all this said, that doesn't mean you should stop using the name.
After all, initial clusters don't stop our illustrious HoD trI'Qal or
DrujIv from using names they happen to like. If you're really stressed
about conforming to Klingon phonology you can say things like your name is
really rI'Hul but it's spelled with no "I" (or conversely that the I is
silent or something. I recall once a section from the Lankhmar series by
Fritz Lieber, in which the Grey Mouser was trying to convince Fafhrd to
change his name to Faferd, since that was how it was pronounced, but Fafhrd
felt he'd miss the mouth-filling chunk of consonants...). Or just that
your name is "r'Hul" and stuff conventional phonology. It's your *name*,
after all, it's not like you're trying to add something to language (though
in general I usually insist that transliterations should conform to Klingon
pronunciation rules, but the ultimate choice of your name should be yours)
Sound aside, I happen to like the way "r'Hul" looks in print, and find it a
very recognizable designation--which is what a name is, anyway.
As to Ruchelle, if you mean like what you hear in Fiddler on the Roof, yes,
that's a diminuative of "Rachel" from Hebrew "raHel" (accent on the last
syllable), re-stressed in Yiddish to have initial stress, whereupon the
second vowel degraded and the first one changed to more like "u", plus the
usual Yiddish second-order diminuative -(el)e used on names (Dovele,
Chavale, Rifkele, etc).
>r'Hul