tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun May 12 09:47:52 1996

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Re: KLBC: naDev jIH tu'lu'

In a message dated 96-05-11 07:30:46 EDT, beHwI''av wrote:

>At 03:39 PM 4/29/96 -0700, you wrote:
>>In a message dated 96-04-29 14:23:22 EDT, ~mark wrote:
>
>>It's too bad that many of us can pronounce Klingon better than most
Klingons
>>we've seen.  I'm sure we all have funny Terran accents which we're not
aware
>>of and have no way of discovering!  For example, I also pronounce {ghajjaj}
>>as {ghaj jaj}, but WHAT IF Klingons really DO pronounce it {ghajaj}?

Actually, I wrote this, not ~mark.

>I haven't got a funny Terran accent!
>
>If you want to get away from double glottle stops and double lettering, try,
>as I do, to breathin on the second while pronouncing it, that way you hear
>the letter/stop softly, indicating th difference.

It's not how *I* pronounce things, it's how *Klingons* pronounce things.  For
example, when I say the word "gate" in a sentence, it ends with a glottal
stop with my tongue in a t position, not a t.  If fact, when spoken in a
sentence, the only difference between "gate" and "gade" (a made-up word) is
that the "a" is longer in "gade."  If I am enunciating "gate" carefully, I
will pronounce the t.  However, if you look it up in a dictionary, you will
only see one pronunciation: that with a t.  Clearly, how words are used is
different than how they are "properly" pronounced.

Perhaps a better example is the word "letter."  I'm not sure of the proper
ASCII way to indicate a schwa, but I'll use @.  My dictionary gives the
pronunciation of "letter" as (let' @r).  However, I *say* something which
sounds more like (led' @r).

So the question is not how to pronounce these double sounds, but how do
*Klingons* pronounce them in specific words?  Unfortunately, there are few
Klingons around to tell us.

>What do you think about pronouncing my name?
>
>Qapla
>
>beHwI"av (Daniel, my Klingon name smart-alec!)

I pronounce it more like {beHwI'av}, but leave a little extra time during the
glottal stop than I would normally.

SuStel
Hovjaj 96363.2

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