tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Sep 27 10:28:11 1994
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Re: Pronunciation (Was: Re: KLBC: jItagh)
- From: KLI Round Table Acct <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Pronunciation (Was: Re: KLBC: jItagh)
- Date: Tue, 27 Sep 1994 13:27:51 -0400 (EDT)
- In-Reply-To: <[email protected]> from "...Paul" at Sep 26, 94 04:08:04 pm
> I've come to the conclusion that "q" is almost exactly like a "k" in English,
> and "Q" is a "k" with the German "ch" after it, and then "H" is simply the
> German "ch" without any hard k at all... But I have a lot of trouble
> getting my "Q"s to sound much different than my "H"s... :(
>
> ...Paul
I don't believe this is a warranted conclusion to reach. Okrand tells us
that the Klingon "q" is rather like the English "k" in "kumquat" only not
quite. Not all that helpful. Though he does go on to describe tongue
placement. I believe his example is there to let us know that the "k" is
what a linguist would call a "stop" or a "plosive" sound, which describes
the manner in which the phoneme is produced. The details on placement of
the tongue round out the description. In fact, the really telling thing
here is the placement which Okrand describes as being considerably
further back in the mouth than is typical for the English "k" sound (or
the Klingon "gh" or "H" for that matter).
When Okrand compares "Q" to "H" and "q" he describes the "Q" as being
raspy and strongly articulated. From this description (and his examples
on the tapes) I have taken him to mean that the "Q" has the same manner
as the "H," which is to say it is a "fricative" (not a "stop" or
"plosive" like the "q") but that it is made in the same place as the "q"
which makes sense given the delightful choking sound it produces.
Comments?
(btw, I have used quotation marks instead of the traditional square
brackets when describing phonemes above simply because most folks reading
this are not acquainted with the convention of distinguishing phonemes
from phones and so forth. If it bothers you, feel free to mentally
substitute [] and // as needed.)
Lawrence
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