tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Dec 29 08:55:29 2010

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RE: hypertransliteration (was Re: klin zha)

Felix Malmenbeck ([email protected]) 

I'm actually tempted to agree with you in general, even though I was the one behind that "translation".

As for this phrase in particular, however, I don't believe there is any widely accepted Klingonaase pronunciation guide (please correct me if I'm wrong;, so I wouldn't be surprised if people's way of pronouncing Klingonaase vary greatly (for instance depending on one's mother tongue and accent, or on whether one chose Spanish, French or German in Middle School).  For instance, I'm not certain how neatly Klingonaase syllables flow together, nor even if the /x/ sounds more like the tlhIngan Hol q, Q or H (I actually usually go with the last of the three).
I personally vary between pronouncing "nal komerex khesterex" with Swedish:ish, English:ish and Spanglish:ish phonology, and the choice of tlhIngan Hol phonemes and number of glottal stops depend on which one I'm using.

...although I will concede that the glottal stop in "e'reQ" in the second and third words don't really feel right in any case whatsoever.


________________________________________
From: [email protected] [[email protected]] on behalf of ghunchu'wI' 'utlh [[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, December 29, 2010 17:08
To: [email protected]
Subject: hypertransliteration (was Re: klin zha)

> nal qo'me'reQ qeSte'reQ ;)

I'm not trying to single out this phrase for attention, or the person
who posted it. It just reminded me of a practice that I've found
slightly uncomfortable for quite a while.

When transliterating a word or name, there are occasionally times when
it is necessary to add sounds to the original in order for the result
to be smoothly pronounceable. "Quark" gets an extra syllable to become
{quwargh}, for example. But I too often notice people using what I see
as inappropriate glottal stops that seem intended only to carefully
separate syllables that aren't quite so carefully separated in the
source word's pronunciation. One at least as often finds sounds being
*omitted* in transliteration, as in {DIlyum} "trillium" and
{'entepray'} "Enterprise".

In this particular case, if I'm speaking tlhIngan Hol and I try to say
"khomerex" (Klingonaase for "structure which grows") without
contorting my mouth, it comes out as a very unstilted *{HommereQ}.
Similarly, "khesterex" (Klingonaase for "structure which dies") ends
up sounding like *{HeStereQ}. I could accept {q} as the first sound
without too much objection, but there are absolutely no glottal stops
in either word.

(As a preemptive answer to the possibility that someone will try to
use {Suto'vo'qor} as a counterexample, I will point out both that the
transliteration is theoretically *from* Klingon into English, and that
the typical spelling is "Sto-vo-kor" with explicitly separate
syllables.)

-- ghunchu'wI'

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