tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Apr 08 12:58:12 1996
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Re: Phonology
- From: "Mark E. Shoulson" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Phonology
- Date: Mon, 8 Apr 1996 15:58:08 -0400 (EDT)
- In-reply-to: <[email protected]> (message fromConsulat General de Pologne on Mon, 8 Apr 1996 12:31:08 -0700)
>Date: Mon, 8 Apr 1996 12:31:08 -0700
>From: Consulat General de Pologne <#[email protected]>
>Reading TKD I have found that the phonology section is very small.
>And because of that form time to time the names you transcribe into
>tlhIngan Hol break some basic phonological rules of the language.
>1). No word or syllable begins with a vowel. It must take <'> in the
>beginning.
>The only known exception <-oy> is also dubious (see Addendum, 3.3.1).
>2) No word or syllable begins with more than one consonant.
>3) No word or syllable ends with more than one consonant, except
>for three situations:
> -w'
> -y'
> -rgh
>4) Therefore, all the words that have a three-consonant cluster in the middle
>other than <w'+C>, <y'+C>, <rgh+C> (where "C" stands for a syllable-beginning
>consonant) break the basic phonological rule.
>5) No words containing letters: f, k, x, z, c (not ch) and g (not gh) can be
>considered legal tlhIngan-Hol words.
>Maybe all this is known to you, but not observed.
Yes, it's well-explored... but we still go through it now and then when
newcomers come by who are not so familiar with these rules and make Klingon
names for themselves which don't conform. Thanks for restating them so
concisely! We've had similar lists before, but reinforcement comes in
handy.
Know, though, that many names don't change even though their owners
recognize the broken phonology rules. r'Hul, for example, thought about it
and decided to keep her name the way she spelled it, because that's how she
LIKED it to be spelled. The same goes for trI'Qal and DrujIv, and a few
obviously Klingonaase names. Names are personal things, I guess, and some
people would rather not worry about the language too much when it comes to
names. It's a name, after all, and not proposed as a valid sentence or
word or utterance. Me, I like names to conform, so in translations I'm
involved in I try to make them OK. But especially when dealing with one's
own name, rules have to bend a little, since after all the one name is the
ultimate arbiter of a name.
~mark