tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat May 31 20:32:07 1997
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Klingon vowels
- From: Nick Nicholas <[email protected]>
- Subject: Klingon vowels
- Date: Sat, 31 May 1997 18:20:08 +1000
- Organization: Ling & App Ling, Uni of Melbourne
Actually, the Klingon phonology published in HolQeD 1.1 proposed (and I see
no reason from the Klingon glosses to dispute it) that the Klingon vowel
system is actually quite idiosyncratic, in that the front vowels are lax, and
the back vowels tense. Thus:
i: "As English i in misfit". Straightforwardly lax front high unrounded (IPA
capital I).
e: "As in English sensor". Mid-open front unrounded; Spanish and Modern Greek
e is a little higher than the English sound --- it's usually classed as just
mid.
a: "As in English psalm; never as in Amercian English crabapple". This could
be either a low central (as in American English psalm), or low back rounded
(as in British English psalm; the American English o as in knot sound is its
unrounded counterpart). Okrand's pronunciation, as far as I can recall, is
low central; anyone care to corroborate?
o: "As in English mosaic". Initially, it was assumed this was IPA oU --- i.e.
the diphthong, as in "low". This is suggested by Okrand himself, since ow is
according to him indistinguishable from o. However, he has never pronounced
it like this: to' does not rhyme with English "toe". It seems reasonable to
conclude that what he is pronouncing is just the first sound of oU ---
mid-high back rounded, as in German Sohn. If you say "mosaic" (moUzEIk) fast
enough, the U does indeed drop out (mo:zEIk); maybe this is ultimately what
Okrand had in mind, anyway. The Modern Greek and Spanish sound is, again,
just mid: less 'tense' than IPA o.
u: "As in English gnu or prune; never as in but or cute." The English sound
actually hovers around rounded high central (or at least centralised); but
Okrand's u sounds to me (again, please corroborate) like a back high vowel
--- like 'European' u.
--
[Nick Nicholas. Linguistics & Applied Linguistics, University of Melbourne ]
[[email protected] http://daemon.apana.org.au/~opoudjis]
["There is no theory of language structure so ill-founded that it cannot ]
[be the basis for some successful Machine Translation." --- Yorick Wilks ]