tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Dec 03 13:22:29 1996

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Re: Glottal stop ['] question(s)


On Tue, 3 Dec 1996 11:43:38 -0800 Oliver Pereira 
<[email protected]> wrote:


> > In other words, in English, the word "attitude" would be spelled 
> > in Klingon {'atItuD} because we ALWAYS start our open vowels 
> > with a glottal stop, just like Klingons do, except Klingons have 
> > a letter of the alphabet for it and English speakers don't.
> 
> We ALWAYS do, do we? I don't.

So, is English your native language? As it has been explained to 
be by linguists on this list, English does always, dependably, 
regardless of degree of emphasis, consistently and exclusively 
begin every single instance of a bare vowel which breaks silence 
(not merely changing sound from a previous syllable) begin with 
a glottal stop. We don't know HOW to start a vowel sound any 
other way. It becomes an obsticle for us when we try to learn 
languages which don't do this. It marks us as foreigners, giving 
us a non-native accent because we cannot do it, much the same 
way that many oriental speakers have so much difficulty 
differentiating between "r", "l" and "w". Spend your life with a 
certain set of phonemes and it is a challenge to broaden that 
set with something beyond your experience.

As long as you don't elide between words, you will naturally 
begin syllables beginning with the apostrophe correctly. This 
particular rule of Klingon sound is consistent with English.

> I would say that in a word which normally begins with a vowel, the glottal
> stop is the sound produced when one is emphasizing the word.

This would not be all that accurate, but perhaps it is not so 
inaccurate that it won't help some people. 
Itwouldbeespeciallyusefultothosewhorunalltheirwordstogether.

> 'olIva'

charghwI'

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