tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue Sep 24 18:06:19 1996

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Re: 'The Deadly Field', Eskimo language, and tlhIngan Hol

On Tue, 24 Sep 1996, Cory Caserta wrote:
> I had seen the televised version of 'The Deadly Field'(or was it 'Deadly 
> Fields',) a Steven Segall film, and there were some eskimoes in it. When I 
> heard them speak, the sounds that they made sounded strangely tlIngan! I heard 
> 'tlh', 'q', 'Q', 'S', ''' [glottal stops], and 'ng' alot.  I just thought it 
> was interesting to see a 'human' language that sounded so familiar to tlhIngan 
> Hol, and from what I could hear from words and sounds, all of the letters 

Well, as probably the only Alaskan in this group, I could respond to that.
I have some friends who are Inupiaq Indians and their language does sound
like tlhingan.  The structure of many Native Alaskan languages is much
like tlhingan as well.  Including the subject-object marker that we add to
verbs.  So that wasn't totally a strange thing to me.  They also have the
suffixes and prefixes that create long, yet very specific and meaningful
words.  I, too, have wondered if Okrand based tlhingan on Native Alaskan
languages.

Back to archive top level