tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu May 16 20:57:15 1996

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Re: Cannon for Multiple Consonants



Sa' qIQwI' writes:
>"Klingon uy resembles ooey in English gooey(1). Klingon ew
>resembles nothing in English, but can be approximated by
>running Klingon e and u together. Likewise, Klingon Iw is I
>and u run together. No words in Klingon have ow or uw. If
>they did, they would be indistinguishable from words ending
>in o and u, respectively."
>
>(1) none of my dictionaries knows "gooey" so for me it's
>a useless example of pronunciation.

Do you know "kablooie" or "ptui" or the South American name
for Guinea Pig (I don't know how to spell it, but it sounds
like "cooey")?

>First TKD says Iw is I and u run together, then I'm told
>the latter sound is a consonant. I felt rather confused
>to hear that the u-sound is a consonant. I assumed that
>"I and u run together" meant diphthong, and Okrand just
>wanted to avoid a difficult grammatical term.

It says {ew} can be *approximated* by running {e} and {u} together,
and it says {Iw} can be *likewise* approximated with {I} {u}.  The
best explanations I've seen for pronouncing them involve imagining
Elmer Fudd saying "tewwible" and "miwacle" where the "w"s take the
place of "r"s in the words "terrible" and "miracle."

-- ghunchu'wI'               batlh Suvchugh vaj batlh SovchoH vaj




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