tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Feb 20 04:45:50 1996
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Re: Interview with Okrand
- From: "Dr. Lawrence M. Schoen" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Interview with Okrand
- Date: Tue, 20 Feb 1996 04:45:50 -0800
>>> That word, I think, comes from me, but it got mangled a little bit. I
>>> made up a word for "serpent" or "worm" (ghargh). When the actors said
>>> it, the pronunciation changed a bit. So I decided that ghargh was a
>>> worm that was crawling on the ground, and gagh was the same creature when
>>> prepared as food.
>
> This is a third spelling/pronunciation for "serpent worm cooked as food." We
> already have qagh in TKD and ghaq as spoken in TNG. But, because this one
> comes from MO most recently, can we take this one as the correct spelling?
>
>peHruS
I don't think so. While I personally don't recall a use of "ghaq" as you
describe, I have seen "gagh" quite frequently (though most people seem to
pronounce it as "gaH"). This isn't surprising since most of these folks are
English speakers and they can't *hear* (let alone produce) /gh/.
Try it some time. Grab a Trek fan at a convention and say ghargh. He/she will
smile and repeat gaH. You'd think they'd at least *hear* the lack of voicing at
the end, or realize that the initial and final sounds are the same, but, nope.
Doesn't work that way. At least, not in my experience.
So, no, I wouldn't consider ghaq a correct spelling, just a backwards one.
Lawrence
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