tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Aug 21 01:55:13 1996
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Klingon dialects
- From: "A.Appleyard" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Klingon dialects
- Date: Wed, 21 Aug 1996 09:54:32 GMT
- Organization: Materials Science Centre
- Priority: normal
The non-Okrand (non-Maltz) Starfleet transcriptions for Klingon names make
me wonder just how some Klingons actually pronounced their language.
(0) Forms like p'takh = petaQ, bregit lung = bIreqtagh, K't'inga =
qIt'Inga', suggest that weakening or dropping unstressed wowels was common.
(1) When some Starfleet man spelt the name {qoreQ} as `Korax', where did the
`s' component of the `x' = `ks' come from? A likelier transcription would be
"Korrekh" or the like, if {qoreQ} is what the Starfleet man heard. Either
`Korax' is a classicalizing distortion after Greek `korax' = "raven, crow",
biological name `Corvus corax' = "raven"; or what he heard from some Klingon
ended in -qS or -ks or -Hs or the like. Perhaps standard tlh.H. final -Q is
sometimes derived from older *-qS, which persisted in some dialects. This is
where I am tempted to allow Klingonaase into the scenario, as an old language
of some parts of Qo'noS which is now unofficial but still persists in some
areas: some Klingonaase words end in `-x', e.g. "komerex", and standard tlh.H.
speakers might tend to say -Q when trying to pronounce final -ks in
Klingonaase names.
(2) Hearing -ey- as "ah" in qeylIS > Kahless is unexpected; here again I
suspect that Starfleet first heard this name from a non-standard Klingon
dialect or language.