tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon May 26 23:43:27 2003
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RE: the glottal stop
- From: "Sangqar (Sean Healy)" <[email protected]>
- Subject: RE: the glottal stop
- Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 04:36:58 +0000
>In English and Klingon (and every language I've ever studied), no words
>exist that begin with a "pure" vowel sound. A glottal stop always
>precedes the vowel. A difference between English and Klingon is that in
>English we do not mark this phenomenon and mostly don't even realize its
>existence and in Klingon it is physically marked on the written word and
>even called a letter of the alphabet.
lut lo'lu'DI' toblu' (anecdotal evidence) (In this excerpt, '?' is used to
represent a glottal stop)
Bob Hoberman asks if there is a language in which glottal stop is in
contrast
with 0 in word initial position. Rarotongan (Cook Islands - Polynesian) is
such
a language. Rarotongan is also known as Cook Island Maori. The word for
fish
is 'ika'. The Rarotongans make a dish which they call 'ika mata' (raw
fish),
which is fish marinated in something like coconut milk and (maybe) lime
juice,
which has the effect of cooking it without heat. My wife and I visited
Rarotonga
some years ago and got quite hooked on it. Once she ordered '?ika mata' and
got
a shocked look followed by a very amused look from the Rarotongan waitress.
'?ika' means vagina. Cook Island Maori /?/ corresponds to /h/ in New
Zealand
Maori, where the two words are 'ika' and 'hika' respectively. There are
lots of
pairs of words in Cook Island Maori which would meet his criterion.
Monty Wilkinson, Department of German Studies and Slavic Studies,
Monash University, Clayton, Victoria 3168 Australia
>The above relates to words in isolation only. One of the other
>differences between Klingon and the Earth languages I have studied is
>the maintaining of the glottal stop in Klingon. English (and again, all
>the foreign languages I have studied) tends to allow a final consonant
>sound of the previous word to liaison with the following vowel. English
>does, however, usually leave the glottal stop in place when the
>preceding word ends in a vowel sound (and it seems alone in that). I
>definitely say, "He 'eats, and, "'I 'eat_an_apple." Leaving the glottal
>stop off "eat" in these cases sounds very rural to me.
I have a 'j' (Klingon 'y') sound in front of 'eats' in both these positions,
although in 'he eats' a glottal stop doesn't sound wrong. In 'I eat',
though, a glottal stop sounds stilted, as though I'm pausing between 'I' and
'eat'.
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