tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Mar 26 22:06:11 2003

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Re: Klingon sounds and IPA (was Re: {oy}, diphthong or V+C)

On Fri, 21 Mar 2003 14:02:30 -0500
  [email protected] wrote:

>I'm no linguist, but I think qeyS is saying that the 
>klingonska page
>uses non-standard markings to denote the sounds of the 
>Klingon words,
>a distinction which is likely lost on 99% of us, but 
>which probably
>grates on someone trained in linguistics like a 
>mis-cataloged library
>book would to me.
>
>As I understand it, you can think of the representation 
>of sounds on
>three levels: orthography, for example, the English 
>digraph "th", its
>ideal phonetic representation, and then how it is 
>actually pronounced
>in real words (eg. as in think or breathe).  I don't 
>recall the
>names of each realization, or the proper symbols to mark 
>them, but
>I think qeyS is saying that he suspects that the 
>klingonska page
>is using them wrongly, leading him (a person who actually 
>understands
>these markings) to come to some wrong conclusions. He is 
>asking, were
>these markings deliberately chosen (in which case he must 
>re-evaluate
>his conclusions about klingon prononciation) or not (in 
>which case,
>his original conclusions may still be valid).
>
>Sorry, qeyS, if I'm putting words in your mouth. This is 
>a typical
>example of the kind of heat that can be generated on this 
>list
>over relatively minor misunderstandings.
>
>-- ter'eS

ter'eS, thank you, at least you caught my drift, and it's 
okay, you're not putting that many new words in my mouth. 
I suppose I shouldn't go into such details on this list. 
I did indeed mean that I think the markings (the square 
brackets) were misused in the Klingonska page (as, I 
believe, in many dictionaries), and that was what I was 
trying to make clear. But I guess I wasn't that clear. 
I'm not that much of a linguist, I just had my share of 
phonetics and phonology, being a student of English.
  
My view on which marking to use (last time):

Indicating Klingon orthography --- whichever KLI 
convention there is; CURLY BRACKETS or QUOTATION MARK 
(although the last might cause a little confusion with the 
glottal stop) I myself have gotten used to writing between 
curly brackets now (if in ASCII), following the example of 
some people on this list. 

To write phonemes --- the theoretical value of each sound 
expressed by using IPA symbols (in the tlhIngan case, to 
indicate the way what, on average, the sounds underlying 
the Okrand writing system are like, not how each 
individual speaker pronounces them) written between 
SLANTED BRACKETS

To write (allo)phones --- the realisations of a phoneme 
expressed by using IPA symbols (e.g. is the phoneme /b/ in 
a particular position more voiced or less voiced), written 
between SQUARE BRACKETS. (e.g. [b], with the possible 
addition of diacritics)

Thanks anyway. 

--qeyS--

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