tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Sep 06 07:32:44 1996
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Hamlet as Khamlet
- From: Nick Nicholas <[email protected]>
- Subject: Hamlet as Khamlet
- Date: Fri, 06 Sep 1996 23:24:00 +1000
- Organization: University of Melbourne,Dept. of Linguistics & Applied Linguistics
>Date: Mon, 26 Aug 1991 14:21:48 (-0700)
>From: "Paul B. Duke" <[email protected]>
>To: [email protected]
>Subject: RE:Khamlet vs Hamlet
>Message-ID: <[email protected]>
>> Because English does not have the sound which is represented by Klingon
>> {H}, there is no letter or combination of letters associated with it. So,
>> different combinations appear depending upon who the translator (or
>> transliterator) is, what language is being transliterated, how much coffee
>> the translator has had to drink recently, etc.
>Which is why Okrand used different lanugages to give the proper
>pronunciation of this letter on page 14 of the TKD. Bach (German),
>l'chaim (Yiddish), baja (Spanish). Even in Russian, their letter
>X is pronounced similarly. When it was spelled Khamlet, it infered
>(to me at least) that it was being pronounced incorrectly, and thusly
>misspelled. I find it odd that he would spell it as if you were reading
>a pronunciation guide. Indeed if everyone started transliterating
>tlhIngan Hol as Nick did when writing in English, there would be mass
>confusion.
Which is why (as Lawrence pointed out) I did it strictly for the nonce conceit
of Klingon-as-transliterated-by-Feddied. (The random apostrophes should have
been a give-away for that.) The point was to make all transliterated names
different to their Terran counterparts; H'amlet wasn't really an option. I must
admit, though, the kh transliteration for the voiceless velar fricative *is*
pretty standard in English; I wouldn't have gotten a 'mispronunciation' hint
from it ("Wil'yam Shex'pir" is another matter, of course... :-)
--
NON ME TENENT VINCVLA NON ME TENET CLAVIS STETIT PVELLA RVFA TVNICA SIQVIS
Nick Nicholas http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~nsn Linguistics
QVAERO MEI SIMILES ET ADIVNGOR PRAVIS EAM TETIGIT TVNICA CREPVIT EIA
[email protected] University of Melbourne
ARCHIPOETAE CONFESSIO E CARMINIBVS BVRANIS