tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Nov 18 06:33:14 2011

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Re: [Tlhingan-hol] Eurotalk - New Words - Countries

Philip Newton ([email protected]) [KLI Member] [Hol ghojwI']

On Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 14:53, Josh Badgley <[email protected]> wrote:
> jungwoq Hol (Mandarin)

When De'vID jonpIn and André Müller spoke at qepHom wa'maHDIch, De'vID
proposed {jungwoq ta' Hol} for "Mandarin".

I suppose in a sense, Mandarin's position in the Chinese-speaking
world is a bit like that of {ta' Hol} in the Klingon-speaking one.

> 1.) Klingon does not have a phoneme (correct term?)
> corresponding to zh

Phonemes are conceptional - what tends to matter when borrowing words
is the pronunciation, or range of possible pronunciations, of the
phones: that is, the allophone(s). So you'd want to ask whether
Klingon has a phone corresponding to a given sound.

Also, I'm not sure whether you're aware of this, but Pinyin _zh_ is
not the [Z] (proper IPA: [ʒ]) sound that often gets written _zh_ (e.g.
the sound of _s_ in _measure_).

Instead, I believe it's a retroflex affricate: [t͡ʂ]. (And voiceless
but unaspirated, a category that English and Klingon don't really
have.) Still, as an affricate, {j} is a pretty decent approximation, I
think.

> and 2.) wo' would mean "empire", wouldn't it?

Not necessarily as part of a compound word -- or do you think that
(say) {vIraS} "France" has something to do with tables? (Or even with
built-in vocabulary: I don't think {quHvaj} "dandruff" has anything to
do with {quH} heritage or {vaj} the state of being a warrior, any more
than English "restaurant" has anything to do with ranting. Sometimes a
syllable is just a syllable.)

Cheers,
Philip
-- 
Philip Newton <[email protected]>

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