tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Aug 06 09:06:40 1999
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Re: Vowels
>Date: Fri, 06 Aug 99 14:44:17 EST
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>From: "C.J. Miller" <[email protected]>
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>In Elvish/Klingon are the vowels? What exactly constitutes a vowel?
>If you were to create a new language could you make the vowels
>different?
Your first sentence is missing either a subject ("what") or a predicate
complement. I'm not sure I follow it.
The vowels of Elvish are pretty well studied, though they vary among gthe
various Elvish languages (Sindarin has "y", Quenya doesn't). Mainly,
a/e/i/o/u in short and long lengths, iI think.
Klingon vowels are well defined as well (as opposed to English, which has
lots and sometimes more than people realize). there's a, e, I, o, u. You
could argue that diphthongs in Klingon comprise sorta vowels ,since
something they can be the nucleus of a syllable, and while that bothers
some folks the fact is that if you define the accompanying rules right you
wind up with the same result, so what's the difference. It's likely
simpler not to, though, since diphthongs are not commonly used as
syllable-nuclei except with specific cases (final consonant ', etc (and
others, I know, this isn't exhaustive))
I've used a/e/i/o/u/y/r as vowels in a language of mine (the r being a
syllabic r like in American English "bird", y being a rounded high front
vowel or an unrounded high mid vowel). I could see definite arguments for
all kinds of vowel sets. The basic triangle a/i/u is simple and maximally
distinct; Adding things like unrounded u and o and rounded i and e
(u-umlaut and o-umlaut) makes for asymmetry of rounding (Turkish takes
advantgage of this in its harmony rules). Would ddepend on what I was
creating the language for. Artistic sensibilities? Ease of use/learning?
And by whom? You could also have fun with syllabic l or n or m...
~mark