tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu May 16 09:15:53 1996

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Re: Phonology once again (was: Re: qaSovlu' jIneH)

At 09:50 PM 5/13/96 -0700, ghunchu'wI' wrote:
>macheq writes:

>>Result: I HAVE FOUND NO SLIGHTEST SIGN OF ANY ECHO. What is following the
>>final stops is just a puff of air, as if you'd like to blow off a candle,
>>only much weaker. Exactly as in other languages I know.

In Holland we have a reasonable Arabic speaking community, and I find that
most of the third generation immigrants have more problems with
glottle-stops, than I, when I speaking Arabic or {tlhIngan Hol} even. They
pronounce the Klingon {-'} sound asif it prolongs the last letter before the
{-'}.

>And that's how I hear Okrand himself pronouncing terminal glottal stops
>on the tapes.  The "echoed vowel" description is apparently for speakers
>of English who don't know what a glottal stop is.

I most certainly don't have the idea that he is trying to give a discription
for the speakers not familiar with a glottal-stop. Correct pronounciation of
the word would explain it better than "echoed vowel", thus glottal-stop
becomes glo'l'-stop, with the {-'} carrying out the same function as the
{-'} presant in the Klingon language. In this case one would hear the two
glottal-stops immidiatly, the first being an abrupt ending of the {o}-sound,
the second being the short echoing of the {l} sound, most commenly found at
the begining of the word "La".

>>As Marc Okrand (reH yInjaj! 'ej reH najtaHvIS qeylIS ghomjaj!) is the only
>>native speaker of tlhIngan Hol we know, his
>>pronounciation is the final authority to us. If you treat everything he
>>has written about grammar as a "sacred rule" why are you reluctant
>>to accept as same what he has written of the sounds? And why do you
>>completely disregard what he has "pronounced" on the cassettes?
>
>He isn't a native speaker of tlhIngan Hol.  He's a student, just like the
>rest of us.  He just has the privileged position of being at the source.
>His pronunciation is undeniably *wrong* in one or two cases; he is not
>infallible.  Your constant {reH yInjaj...} implies that you think of him
>as a deity of some sort, and that's not an appropriate comparison.

And the mistakes that he makes are that which make him no better or worse
than any other Klingon speaking Terrans, including you or myself. I found
the {reH yInjaj...} remark to be quiet funny, when I first read it, but it
is not meant to place him appon high, it's a phrase that indicates the (I
can't remember the English word, macheq, what's "afhankelijk"?) way we must
rely? on Marc Okrand, to give us the words/phrases/etc. that we need to keep
Klingon the language that it must become, in time!

>>No meta-linguistical explanations satisfy me. Are you so big a
>>*tlhIngan Hol guru* that you can judge what is important and valid out
>>of what Marc Okrand (reH yInjaj! 'ej reH najtaHvIS qeylIS ghomjaj!)
>>has said and what is unimportant or only "situational"
>>due to the circumstances of the origin of the language?
>
>Actually, "tlhIngan Hol guru" describes a few KLI members quite well.
>If you insist on dismissing "meta-linguistical" explanations, you're
>going to lose out on some interesting information.

Not only that, you lose the reason that any language survives, it lives,
breaths, thinks and evolves. Meta-linguistics, are just that part that is
there, but nobody can seem to change, with out Marc Okrand {reH yInjaj! 'ej
reH najtaHvIS qeylIS ghomjaj!}.

>>>I know of no language which is pronounced precisely the same
>>>by all its speakers, except for those which have only one speaker (and
>>>probably not even they are perfectly consistent).

>>And that's exactly the case of tlhIngan Hol. It has ONE speaker, Marc Okrand
>>(reH yInjaj! 'ej reH najtaHvIS qeylIS ghomjaj!), and many impersonators -
>>both in ST and in KLI and surroundings (including yourself and myself).

>Marc Okrand is *not* the only speaker of tlhIngan Hol.  We are *not*
>"impersonators".  Would you claim that all the speakers of Esperanto
>are merely "impersonating" the language's inventor?  Though the actors
>who play Klingons on Star Trek surely can be described as impersonators;
>that's what actors *are*!

That was moving into my terrain, if anybody takes digs at actors, it will be
I, a "louzy" Klingon speaking actor. Actors are projectors, they project a
feeling on to you, which is then converted into energy, which with the
theater <sp?> is then sent back into actor. This is why I would rather be a
starving actor working on stage, than a rich actor who loses contact with
his fans.

Naaaa! (c;{{{

Qapla'

beHwI"av

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