tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Mar 09 11:30:12 2003

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Re: {oy}, diphthong or V+C

> >>Klingon {y} is a consonant.  It appears only in places that other 
>Klingon
> >>consonants appear, and it never appears in places that only vowels 
>appear.
> >
> >This bit makes me quite sure you're talking about orthography.  I can 
>easily
> >turn this on its head and say that the combination {oy} is a vowel.  It 
>only
> >appears in places where other vowels appear, and never appears in places
> >where only consonants appear.
>
>choyajbe'.
>
>In that word, notice that {oy} appears immediately before {a}.  Vowels
>don't do that in Klingon.

In the parts of my message you left out, I pointed out several times that I 
was talking about {oy} when the letters are part of the same syllable.  The 
fact that  you used this example means that either you missed that point, or 
that you just don't see the distinction.  If you don't see the distinction, 
then you are definitely talking about orthography.

There is a parallel situation with the letter "l" in Brazilian Portuguese.  
Syllable-final versions create a diphthong: "final" is pronounced as /finaU/ 
(excuse lack of IPA), for example.  The letter "l" is obviously a consonant 
orthographically, but the final sound in that word is definitely a 
diphthong.

>For our purposes, phonetics and orthography are the same thing.  While
>there are allophonic variations between syllable-initial and syllable-final
>pronunciations of certain consonants, the writing system we use is intended
>as a strict representation of the sounds of the language.

If you're talking about allophones, then you're talking about phonemics and 
not phonetics.  So that the rest of my post makes sense, I provide some 
brief definitions for those not familiar with the terms.  Phonemics concerns 
groups of sounds that are percieved as the same sound, while phonetics 
concerns the actual sounds.  A sound is called a "phone", a group of phones 
percieved as the same sound is called a "phoneme", and the phones within 
each phoneme are called "allophones" of the phoneme.

For those who don't know, the sound made by "y" in the English word "yes" is 
generally transcribed "j"., and the sound of "oy" in "boy" is "oI", with the 
"I" often superscripted.  So in Klingon the phones [j] and diphthongizing 
[I] are both allophones of the phoneme /j/.

On a side note, I wonder if anyone has gone through and described the phones 
of each Klingon phoneme, especially in light of the information given in KGT 
about various dialects.  It might make a good HolQeD article.  (Or at least 
a Wiki page.)

To sum up my position: the combination {oy} (in the same syllable) is 
orthographically (and most likely phonemically) a vowel followed by a 
consonant, but phonetically, it is almost certainly a diphthong.

>-- ghunchu'wI'

Sangqar


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