tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri May 30 07:36:30 1997
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Re: Spanish/Greek influence
- From: "Mark E. Shoulson" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Spanish/Greek influence
- Date: Fri, 30 May 1997 10:36:22 -0400 (EDT)
- In-reply-to: <[email protected]>(message from Steven Boozer on Thu, 29 May 1997 07:42:59 -0700 (PDT))
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>Date: Thu, 29 May 1997 07:42:59 -0700 (PDT)
>From: Steven Boozer <[email protected]>
>
>Neal Schermerhorn wrote:
>: Not entirely - The Klingon I is pronounced like "i in misfit" (TKD, p. 16),
>: whereas the Spanish i is pronounced like Enghlish ee (el dia bonito = ell
>: dee-ah boh-nee-toh) - the fact that it is the only capitalized Klingon vowel
>: serves to remind us of the difference.
>
>Good point. The capitalized letters are all pronounced differently than
>their English equivalents.
>
>The best place to hear the Klingon I is on "Conversational Klingon" where
>Okrand demonstrates the difference between {tI} and {tI'}. I like to
>describe it as being like the dotless i in Turkish or bI (yery) in Russian
>-- both of which have a Spanish "ee"-type i as well. The closest we can get
>to that sound in Klingon is the diphthong Iy, as in {lIy} "comet".
Hmm... I don't think your phonetic explanation is right, as I understand
things. Klingon "I" seems to be just plain IPA small-capital-I, and maybe
sometimes /i/ (Cardinal 1, a high unrounded front vowel). I understand
that Russian {bI} is IPA barred-i, a high unrounded *central* vowel, and
Turkish dotless-i I recall hearing was turned-m, high unrounded *back*
vowel (much like the vowel usually transcribed as {u} in English
transliterations of Japanese). The Klingon {I} does not change its
articulation based on whether or not there's a glottal stop after it.
Okrand certainly never says anything about such a phenomenon, nor do I hear
it in his pronunciation. {tI} and {tI'} have the same vowel, just that
he pronounces it noticeably longer in {tI} and more forcefully, shorter,
and a bit higher in pitch in {tI'} (and of course there's the glottal stop
at the end). But it's still an IPA /I/, nothing else. {-Iy} is harder to
talk about. The description seems to sound like it should be IPA /i/, but
logically it should be IPA /Ij/, which is not staggeringly easy to
pronounce, and sounds a lot like /i/ anyway.
~mark
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