tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Apr 22 19:44:30 2008
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: cha' Hol ngeb mu'ghommey Daj vItu'pu'!
Doq wrote:
> One thing to keep in mind during the "Is it okay to build our own
> compound nouns?" argument that is often repeated and never resolved:
>
> Romanized tlhIngan Hol is not the written language of Klingons. It is
> a phonetic notation of what a Klingon says out loud. When you say {paq
> po'} it sounds a lot like {paqpo'}. In fact, depending on your timing
> and emphasis, it sounds EXACTLY the same.
>
> So, one sound can be notated phonetically two different ways. Imagine
> that. The blank space, inserted or deleted doesn't really change the
> way you say it, and we are only writing down what you are saying,
> phonetically.
First, a "paqpo'" may not be what you think it is. A "blackbird" is more
than just a "black bird", and not every "black bird" is a "blackbird".
Compounding changes the meaning. A non-native speaker of English would
not be justified in coining "bluebird" or "orangebird" just because
"blackbird" exists. One is coincidentally right, but the other is wrong.
And even on the one that's right, the "blue bird" that the non-native
speaker is calling a "bluebird" may not be the same "blue bird" that a
native speaker knows as a "bluebird".
Second, I have to disagree with you about the pronunciation of compound
words. To stick with the same English example, there is a very real
difference between the pronunciations of "blackbird" and "black bird".
Even when (native speaker) listeners aren't consciously paying attention
to the pause, they CAN tell the difference. The blank space very much
DOES change the way you say it. (At least, it does when both versions
exist. "Ice cream" is spelled as two separate words but pronounced as
though it were a single word - but no word spelled "icecream" exists.)
Furthermore, {pIqaD} is (probably) not a phonemic writing system; that
is, {pIqaD} symbols (probably) don't represent sounds. Perhaps it is
pictographic; perhaps a symbol is pronounced differently in different
dialects. (Written Chinese works this way, although from what we know,
dialects of {tlhIngan Hol} seem to be closer to each other than dialects
of Chinese). In this case, the symbol for "paqpo'" (if the word exists)
may not be simply the shoving together of the two symbols for "paq" and
"po'".
From Okrand on the old MSN Star Trek Expert forum:
***
So the Klingon romanization system is a phonemic system, but what about
<pIqaD>? How, exactly, does <pIqaD> work? I'm not sure. Mike Okuda
(who puts the characters on various control panels and other displays
for the various Star Trek series and movies) and I have discussed it.
We're pretty sure it's not an alphabet (and it's therefore not phonemic
in the way the romanized version is), but we don't know the details.
Prodding of Maltz is definitely in order here.
There is no problem with <pIqaD> being used for the various dialects,
regardless of how it works, because it does not necessarily work the
same way (or, better, the details are not necessarily the same) for all
of the dialects. Since the system has been around for a long time (if
Kahless was literate, he was literate in <pIqaD>), it could provide some
insights into earlier stages of the language. The rules for mapping the
old pronunciations represented by the <pIqaD> writing conventions onto
the new pronunciations surely differ for the different dialects, but the
rules -- with varying degrees of complexity, to be sure -- certainly work.
***