tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jul 23 11:54:19 2001

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Re: Gutturals (was Re: qung "pun")

batlh ghItlhta' Daniela quv:
>In German we do have both sounds, but the gh-sound only occurs after
>bright vowels, while the H-sound can occur after any kind of vowel:

Phonotactic constraints? There's a funny thing about Klingon -- even tho the
sounds are hard to pronounce, it is still quite accommodating to English
phonotactics. This is a possible "mistake" on MO's part, due to English
bias. German natives (and many other) would actually have phonotactic
difficulties with Klingon. (What if MO had been German? How would Klingon
have sounded to him then?)

Compare Finnish, which has q but only as an allophone of k when it occurs
before a back vowel. Thus

ka -> ka
ke -> ke
ki -> ki
ko -> qo
ku -> qu

But Klingon has qI, qe, and qa. Do Finnish Klingonists have trouble with this?

>This makes it very hard for a German speaker to pronounce "ugh"
>without smuggling a small "i" in there (like "uIgh").

Yes. When MO says "ugh", the gh is rounded. ("bIjeghbe'chUGH vaj bIHegh".)
Maybe that will liberate you, since German never rounds its gh anyways.
Still, I have had similar difficulty when back consonants occur adjacent to
front vowels, probably because my first language (English) has almost few
back consonants. In my Klingon accent, a retroflex liquid R is inserted
between a front vowel and a retroflex/back consonant, e.g.

nID -> nIRD
tIq -> tIRq
Qel -> QRel

I've been working to remedy this over the years, but perhaps in vain. After
all, Chinese does it: shi -> shR

Klingons need to be capable of pronouncing pretty much ANY combination of
consonant and vowel together, or any two consonants for that matter. It
wouldn't be a big deal for them to pronounce SH- words, like Dutch
Schijfling. Just insert a barely audible pre-vowel: 'ISHeyvelIng.

I have always wondered whether Klingon has allophones or phonological
transformations of any kind. It would be fascinating to talk to d'Armond's
son to hear if he's developed any in his Klingon. I could have sworn I heard
him fronting the H in nuqneH on the wav file, but that could have been an
overzealous hallucination. We already know that Klingon dedoubles consonants
in rapid speech. What about "nIDtaH" or "nuQHom" where you have to actually
change articulation point in mid-stream? NO natural language asks you to do
that. One would expect a transformation to "nIdtaH" or "nIDTaH", and
"nuQXom" or "nuKHom", respectively. But then again, Klingon physiology is
different, eh?

--Andrew Strader
  "How are you gentlemen? All your base are belong to us."
  http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/~strader

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