tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Sep 22 09:28:44 1994
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Re: KLBC: jItagh
>From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
>Date: Mon, 19 Sep 94 17:02:50 EDT
>According to Craig Altenburg:
>> * How is the (') pronounced at the beginning of a word?
>As it turns out, English speakers ALWAYS pronounce a glottal
>stop as the beginning of a bare vowel. Other languages
>sometimes don't, as in the Hawian "aloha", which English
>speakers apparently cannot pronounce correctly because we
>cannot even hear the subtle difference between a vowel that
>begins with a glottal stop vs. one that doesn't. This is our
>version of the cliche' oriental inability to differentiate
>between an "l" and an "r". In other words, if Klingon had open
>vowels at the beginning of a word, we could not pronounce it
>right. Klingnos merely spell what they say, while we don't.
Ahem. I wouldn't say *can't* pronounce it... it just takes practice (I
recall before I even knew about Hawaiian a time when I knew two women named
"Amy" and my friend and I distinguished between them by calling one [eymIy]
and one ['eymIy] to use semi-Klingon orthography. Only he and I, who knew
what to listen for, were likely to be able to catch the distinction.)
English speakers don't *always* put a "'" on vowel-initial words---but the
times when they don't are sort of cop-out answers. In normal speech, most
native speakers (well, me, anyway) will say "I saw Jane and Michael" with
no "'" in front of "and." It's unstressed and all, so you run it in with
the end of "Jane" making it sound like "jeynend." Only when we speak more
carefully do we mark the beginning of each word with a pause or consonant
or glottal stop of some kind. But thinking of it as "that sound
English-speakers put at the beginnings of words that start with vowels" is
close enough. Just make sure that doesn't mean you ignore it in Klingon!
In the sentence "jIpaw 'ej jIlegh", English would probably run the 'ej onto
the paw, making it sound like "jIpawej." Don't swallow the "'" there in
Klingon!
(So, with the two Amy's, we'd be careful to run the one's name into the
preceding vowel and pronoucnce the stop with the other, not running it in.
Starting an utterance with [eymIy] with no stop took a little practice, but
it can be done. We startd with pronouncing it as though it had an h at the
beginning, and then worked at getting rid of the h.)
>> * How are to (')s in a row pronounced. (e.g qama''e')
>You might ask how two "t"s are pronounced in "splatter". Like
>any other consonant, when it is doubled, it is usually
>pronounced only once, though extreme elocutionists may choose
>to explicitly enunciate each one. I know a human who pronounces
>every "t" twice. She says "water" so it sounds like "watt ter".
>Yes. Any word with a "t" in it sounds like two words when she
>is done with it.
I'd have to agree withyou. Okrand pronounces many doubled consonants as
one in the tapes consistently, including "'".
>> Qapla'.
>>
>'ej SoHvaD Qapla' je.
>charghwI'
~mark