tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Oct 23 11:39:45 2014

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Re: [Tlhingan-hol] [KLBC] Tlinget influence?

Robyn Stewart ([email protected]) [KLI Member] [Hol po'wI']

The tlh is in Kwakiutl too, and Halkomelem has the lh sound without the
initial t. (It might have tlh - but I don't remember seeing any words with
the sounds together). I think the sound is quite common in northwest coastal
languages.  My aunt was an anthropologist and I grew up on the northwest
coast, so I was familiar with the sound.

Tlingit is insanely complex, both in sounds and in grammar. I thought it
would be funny to know both tlhIngan Hol and Tlingit, but took one look at
Tlingit and said, "NOPE!" I'd be surprised if there weren't features of
Tlingit in Klingon, as Tlingit has a lot of stuff.

Every language I have ever studied has aspects that match Klingon. I
actually wrote Marc Okrand a letter thanking him for the Klingon verb
prefixes, because without having learned that, I might have fled from Cree,
but now Cree, I laugh at your paltry verb prefixes (still trying to figure
out your myriad verb endings, though). I also thank Marc on a regular basis
for not including arbitrary noun gender. 

I would say at least every six months someone turns up suspecting or even
insisting that Klingon is based on some other language, because they've
matched a bunch of features. It's rarely the same one. Marc, being a
linguist, is familiar with interesting things a language can do, and put
lots of them in Klingon.

Is your friend learning Tlingit? I wish him much luck. There are precious
few native speakers, and languages deserve to be spoken.

- Qov


-----Original Message-----
From: Steven Boozer [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: October 23, 2014 6:24
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: [Tlhingan-hol] [KLBC] Tlinget influence?

Casey Ransberger[] :
>> Does anyone know if the Tlinget language was an influence on the 
>> design of tlhIngan Hol?
>>
>> The "Tl" in Tlinget is indistinguishable to my ear the from "tlh" 
>> used in Klingon.
>>
>> Some words in the language have a striking similarity in terms of the 
>> sound or feel of the words, and it just really struck me while a dear 
>> friend was putting me onto some people speaking Tlinket after I'd 
>> been going on about Klingon and such.

De'vID:
> Any similarity you see between Klingon and Tlinget is probably a 
> coincidence, though it possibly stems from a similarity between 
> Tlinget and Mutsun. (I don't know enough about either to comment about
> that.)
 
I believe the {tlh} phoneme also occurs in Nahuatl and Navaho - both well
studied by linguists.  Okrand may have come across them in his class work or
reading; apparently it's not uncommon in Amerindian languages.  (OTOH the
sound is in Welsh too, spelled "ll" IIRC.)


--
Voragh
Ca'Non Master of the Klingons



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