tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Aug 08 19:56:42 1999
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Re: Vowels
>Date: Fri, 06 Aug 99 17:12:41 EST
>From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
>
>On Fri, 6 Aug 1999 12:28:55 -0400 [email protected] wrote:
>
>> 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
>
>I don't believe that Klingon has any diphthongs. I've never seen
>one. Since {y} and {'} are consonants, the only affix that
>offers any potential for a diphthong is {-oy}, and that is
>preceeded by {'} if it follows an open syllable. So, where do
>you get this idea of a diphthong in Klingon?
This argument has been done before; I was just remembering it. The fact is
it's all a matter of how you choose to name things: if you formulate the
rules right you wind up with the same results at the end of the day whether
you believe in diphthongs or not. I find it simpler, as you do, to keep it
as vowels and consonants and occasional glides and exceptions to make the
phonology work, but you could construct the exact same phonology by
starting from vowels and diphthongs and having different exceptions and
whatnots. *Shrug*. Whatever floats the individual language-student's boat.
>> 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).
>
>I'm just starting out learning Turkish and find this a
>fascinating aspect of the language. Basically, instead of having
>fixed suffixes which are then slurred by people who are trying
>to talk fast, you make rules demanding that you take the easiest
>possible pronunciation of the suffix, changing the
>voiced/unvoiced state of the opening consonant to match the
>closing consonant of the previous syllable and changing the
>front/back and rounded/unrounded state of the vowel to match the
>vowel of the previous syllable... all to make the word easier to
>say quickly. It's wild. As arbitrary rules go, this one seems
>remarkably "natural" to follow.
Same deal happens when you get sandhi in Sanskrit, but more complicatedly
(and with somewhat different effect). A blast, innit?
>> 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...
>
>So, basically, you are ready to use any voiced consonant as a
>vowel. Hey, why stop there? Cherokee uses "s" as a whole
>syllable. :) For that matter, for one exclammatory, so does
>Klingon.
Any voiced consonant? Are you mad? After all, some languages have
*unvoiced* vowels too! :) But it would have to be a *continuant*, not a
stop. I can't find my linguistics dictionary atm for a proper definition
of "vowel", but if for the sake of argument we use "sound that can be the
nucleus of a syllable," practically any continuant can qualify... with
varying degrees of likelihood. Certainly r is in English (for some values
of r and some values of English) and Sanskrit, n is syllabic in Japanese,
there's a vocalic l in *one* verb in Sanskrit (it used to be more
widespread in earlier forms of the language, but dropped mostly out by the
Classical period),... these are all fairly frictionless sounds. S is in
the Klingon exclamation and s is in Cherokee and in stuff like "Pssst!" I
think the more friction the sound has the harder it is to make it hold a
syllable, so H would be hard... but not necessarily impossible.
~mark