tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Jan 28 19:14:47 2002
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RE: qepHom, qep, qep'a'
- From: Tad Stauffer <[email protected]>
- Subject: RE: qepHom, qep, qep'a'
- Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2002 19:02:57 -0500
Lawrence:
>A couple examples:
>1) the general preference for using HIja' for "yes" (despite the
>potentially ambiguous homophonous imperative) over HISlaH. [Personally, I
>prefer HISlaH, and I've noted that Tad seems to as well. Hmm... maybe its
>a Pennsylvannia thing.]
>2) choosing to use pI' over ror (or vice versa) for "be fat" when I know
>of no denotative distinction between the two.
charghwI':
>For what it's worth, I've always considered {HISlaH} to be something Okrand
>wrote to backfit something an actor said who couldn't pronounce {HIja'}, and
>{'a} always sounded distinctly unKlingon, considering it is one of perhaps
>half
>a dozen Klingon words ending in a vowel and seems entirely too common a
>word to
>deserve such an exceptional pronunciation. I've always said {'ach}.
True, some of words with multiple pronunciations probably came from
mispronunciations. {joH}/{jaw} seems like an obvious example of that. It
seems to me that we use {joH} a lot more than {jaw} for "lord"; this may
just be to avoid confusing {jaw} "lord" with {jaw} "chat".
Lawrence is right that I tend to use {HISlaH} rather than {HIja'}. Although
{HISlaH} avoids the homophone problem, I guess I like {HISlaH} mostly
because of the sound, and because it is used less frequently by others.
{HISlaH} sounds quite raspy; with only one {H} in {HIja'}, I probably would
mispronounce {HIja'} by using the English "h" sound.
Hmmm... for the other multiple Klingon words for single English words (in
case someone is taking notes to map usage):
In writing and speech, I think I use {'a} and {'ach} about the same frequency.
I don't say "thousand" too often in Klingon, but when I do, I try to use
{SanID} instead of {SaD}. {SanID} sounds fancier to me, and gives me
practice flexing my tongue. :-)
I believe I use {ghot} more often than {nuv}.
Although I don't use {lu'}/{luq} too frequently, when I do, I usually
choose {lu'}.
I don't use the other words, such as "be fat", "torpedo tube", "machinery",
etc. much, so I don't know if I prefer one over the other.
- taD