tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu May 16 09:16:51 1996
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: chIagu
At 08:46 AM 5/14/96 -0700, Doy'wI' wrote:
>according to Dr. Maciej St. Zieba:
>>Your exaple doesn't convince me. Sanskrit indeed in some cases like the one
>>described by you (and with accuracy told as rare) "resigns" and accepts
>>hiatus and in 90% avoids it by introducing semivowels, vowel-contraction (or
>>whatever you call it in English, when two vowells form one longer) or elision
>>in betwenn.
>
>One the one hand, you aren't convinced by a valid example of Sanskrit
>vowel-hiatus. On the other hand, you agree that Sanskrit indeed does
>accept hiatus in some cases. I no longer follow your argument.
What he isn't convinced by is that the same applies to {tlhIngan Hol}, he
cannot dispute the FACT that Sanskrit contains vowel-hiati.
>>But what happens here? a slight pause is introduced between the two
>>vowels which results in a glottal closing of vocal organs, i.e. a stop.
>
>A hiatus is not the same thing as a stop. When I pronounce the word
>"react", I certainly do not close my "vocal organs" between the two
>syllables.
>>I see that you cannot convince me so far, neither can I convince you.
>>If you have no other arguments let's give up here and not make other
>>members of the tlhIngan-Hol list get bored. I know that the minutest
>>questions of phonology can raise the highest emotions (I remember it from
>>my phonetics classes, as a student, when we were able to discuss for
>>hours about the pronounciation of the palatalised "k" in Polish
>>(*k* before an *i* followed by another vowel).
>
>How would you resolve a pronunciation issue of this sort? You would
>listen to "accepted" speakers of the language and compare the way they
>speak with the way they say they should speak. You can do the same
>thing here. Listen to the descriptions given by the only fluent
>speakers of Klingon in the known universe. By default, they define
>correct pronunciation. There are no "real" Klingons to ask.
You state exactly what he and ~mark agreed on.
>>Let's not make the war for the smallest of all the letters.
>
>The apostrophe may be physically the smallest letter, but it is not a
>minor letter. It is a full-fledged consonant, with all the duties and
>privileges that go along with that status. It is as much a part of
>the Klingon alphabet as are the letters q and p.
In this he doesn't state that {-'} is the smallest letter, he says that
unless we can resolve it satisfactory to all parties involved there is no
sence continuing this disscussion, about the pronounciation of this one
letter, when there are many more one could discuss, with more valid canon
material.
Qapla'
beHwI"av