tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Dec 12 08:26:02 1993
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Re: tlhIngan Hol qun vIwam - an article
>From charghwI's article:
>Note the beginning glottal stop in {'eH}. There are no directions in
>TKD for pronouncing a glottal stop at the beginning of a syllable.
It's really easy, and is done in many human languages. Note the
"constriction" of your throat when you pronounce a word like "joHwI'".
This is your glottis closing. To pronounce a glottal stop at the
beginning of the syllable, close your glottis, then force air up into
your throat, building up pressure. Then release the glottal closure and
pronounce the vowel; there will be a sudden onset and the vowel will
be pronounced "explosively".
>I've noticed that the seemingly random capitalization follows the
>pattern that the least English sounding phonemes are capitalized, except for
>"i", which for all I can tell is capitalized solely in order to be confused
>with the lower case "L".
Well, Hol "I" is lax, and the IPA symbol for that sound (high front
lax vowel) is an uppercase "I" that is the size of a lowercase letter.
However, Hol "e" is also lax, and the IPA symbol for that is something
like an epsilon.
I find that the writing of "I" does indicate that it's pronounced
differently that one expects - most of the other vowels are pronounced
as if this were a Romance language, but "I" is not.
Fascinating stuff. Can't wait to see the ST3 article. Do you hvae
transcriptions of the Vulcan from ST1 and ST2? (And where is that
Vulcan info that QichQemwI' promised us?)
-QumpIn 'avrIn