tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Aug 12 12:20:40 1999

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Re: Vowels, and pronunciation advice

To those who don't like long, detailed conversations about 
linguistic trivia, stop now. Just delete this and move on. It's 
~mark and charghwI' at it again, as we sometimes love to do, 
with some Marc Ruehlaender tossed in as well.

On 12 Aug 1999 18:02:59 -0000 [email protected] wrote:

> >Mailing-List: contact [email protected]; run by ezmlm
> >Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999 11:47:27 CDT
> >From: Marc Ruehlaender <[email protected]>
> >
> >
> >No worries, I am not continuing the phonological thing,
> >but am turning a little towards pronounciation...
> >
> >jatlh charghwI':
> >[about <y,w,r>]
> >> it just seems so artificial to consider them to be consonants 
> >> for syllable beginnings and semi-vowels for syllable endings.
> >> 
> >for what it's worth, I do pronounce <y,w> differently in the
> >two positions. syllable-initially, they sound like in english
> >"yet" and "wet" resp., while syllable-finally (incl. <y',w'>)
> >they sound like Klingon <I,u> but shorter.

Why? Unless I'm merely ignorant and insensitive, I pronounce 
them pretty close to the same whether they are initial or 
closing, though I guess for me they are positions that I move to 
or from, so {-ew} really does sound like a backwards {we-}, etc..

> >(if you want technical terms, syll.-ini. I pronounce semi-consonants,
> >ASCII-IPA [j,w], syll.-fin. I pronounce unsyllabic versions of
> >ASCII-IPA vowels [I,U], and I do think there is a difference :)

I would expect you to, given that you choose to notate them 
differently. Why bother notating them differently if you didn't 
think they were pronounced differently?
 
> You're splitting hairs here.  You're starting to confuse phones for
> phonemes.  It isn't possible to pronounce every sound precisely the same
> way in all environments; our mouths aren't built for that (in fact, Okrand
> has said occasionally that he had fun with that in Klingon, in ignoring the
> effects of assimilation (say, between consonant and consonant, like maybe
> in "pongqoq", where the ng would be expected to move toward the q), even
> though that's expected in all languages.  But this isn't a HUMAN language,
> maybe these aliens can avoid assimilation like that!  So there, linguists,
> another joke I'm playing on you).  Glides are particularly prone to this,
> but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're different phonemes in those
> different positions.  Just different phones. 

This sounds like one of those points where science leaps off 
into philosophy. Philosophers don't stop thinking when they've 
"solved" something. Thinking something through is not the point. 
The point is thinking. It's not QublI'. It's QubtaH.

> Let me define the terms in
> case someone got left out.  The human (Klingon?) mouth is capable of
> producing effectively an infinite number of different sounds, since after
> all your articulatory surfaces are continuous, so your tongue can hit
> *here* or *there* or at any of the infinite points in-between (and if
> anyone starts arguing about discreteness of the universe or atoms or
> something I will scream). 

I'm not discrete. Why should the Universe be different?

> There are no dividing lines in your mouth that
> universally declare for all speakers where n stops and ng starts (ask me
> or Lawrence about the way the letter t winds up among people with an Indian
> accent sometime for a good example). 

Is that the anecdote about how the tongue tip actually points 
downward so that the top surface of the tongue is pressed 
against the back of the front teeth?

> So each language whacks the
> sound-space up into sounds which it considers distinct, but not all the
> same way.  We in English consider the p-sound in "pin" to be the same sound
> as in "spin", even though one is aspirated and one isn't. 

Ahhh. "Spin" is actually "s-p-hin". I never noticed that. Cool.

Then again, one of my philosopher professors from Georgia was 
convinced that there was no difference between the sounds of the 
words "pin" and "pen" and if two other people demonstrated to 
him that they could both speak and hear the difference, he would 
just claim that it was a conspiracy of pretense. We were just 
pulling his leg. It's just one word to him.

> But to a Hindi
> speaker, they're very different sounds, different as n and ng.  And watch
> where your tongue hits your palate when you say "keel" versus "cool";
> they're not even close.  But we don't consider them different sounds. 

Got me again. So, "cool" is to "keel" as {qul} is to "cool".

> I
> don't think the glides in Klingon are necessarily different on different
> ends of the word, any more than they have to be owing to natural
> variation.

What you said. Yeah!
 
> >as for <r>, I pronounce it as a trill always, even syll.-fin.
> >(incl. <rgh>) although Okrand on the tapes more often than not
> >pronounces an american semi-consonantal thingy there.

The first time I met Okrand, he was presenting a talk on Klingon 
pronunciation and he said there were difficult-to-pronounce 
consonant clusters. I suggested that {rgh} was difficult because 
the trill is at the tip of the tongue while the {gh} was at the 
back and shifting from one to the other makes my tongue spaz 
out, but he said that {rgh} was EASY, and demonstrated with an 
{r} that is not trilled at all. He then went on to point out 
that {Dt} (in {taDtaH}) or {tD} (in {qatDI'}) are much more 
difficult. Meanwhile, I consider these to be just as easy if the 
consonants are compromised as much as his {r} in {rgh}. I didn't 
argue the point at the time, however. Hey, there were people 
listening and I didn't want to publicly hassle a hero.

> >I _chose_ to follow the description in TKD here rather than
> >the examples from the tapes. If you chose otherwise, fine with
> >me, and if you want to reflect that in your phonological rules,
> >I don't see a problem either (I know, you, charghwI', don't,
> >but... you know what I mean)

Whatever.
 
> I've studied dozens of languages, some with really funky phoneme-stocks.
> And I'm really good at pronouncing alien, exotic sounds.  Except one.  I
> can't for the life of me get a good lingually-trilled r. 

Meanwhile, that's one of the things I do best. My friend with 
whom I'm studying Turkish is jealous. From the tapes I've heard, 
I think the Turkish "r" is particularly beautiful. It is such a 
delicate trill. So light and brief, yet so essential for 
clearity, like the French aspiration at the end (and sometimes 
the begining and even throughout the whole word) of the word 
"oui", which Americans typically don't notice and don't 
pronounce. We tend to pronounce it like "we". That's not how it 
sounds when a Frenchman says it.

> It's been
> suggested that my highly-arched palate actually prevents me from doing
> it, but I'm not sure.

It's a copout. My trills are barely back from the gum line. They 
almost touch my teeth. The arch is irrellevant.
 
> >> So, then you are suggesting that the same romanized character is 
> >> being used for two distinctly different characters, even though 
> >> they are pronounced identically. They can only be differentiated 
> >> because one is used to open a syllable, while the other is used 
> >> to close a syllable.
> >> 
> >well, I do pronounce them how ever slightly differently.
> >and I think the fact that we use the same romanization
> >for the two sounds has no impact on their function in
> >Klingon grammar (or their writing system)
> 
> The orthography is often irrelevant to a language's phonology, and doubly
> so when it's transliterated into another alphabet.
 
Hmmm. When Okrand said that the romanized notation was phonetic, 
I never considered that he meant that you had to combine the 
position AND symbol choice in order to determine the 
pronunciation. He doesn't mention that in TKD.
 
> More on assimilation and care-taking when speaking Klingon.  An interesting
> story.
> 
> During the mu'qaD veS at the qep'a', we were slinging insults and comebacks
> at each other, much to everyone's enjoyment.  It wasn't lightning-fast, but
> it was fun and clever.  Qov was doing her best to keep up a running
> translation for some folks who couldn't follow the Klingon.  Since I was
> ostensibly leading the activity, I was often on the receiving end of
> insults, and thus was often called upon to return fire.  Once, someone
> (pagh?  I forget) said to me "mep betleH Dalo'".  I retorted something like
> "vIlo'DI' jIH, yap mep betleH!"  Qov told us she'd had to do some
> backtracking.  She had mis-heard the insult at first, and it was still
> pretty good.  What she'd heard was "mep be' neH Dalo'!"  A very different
> insult indeed,

She's not the only one who heard it that way. That's certainly 
what *I* heard. I had to go through the same backtracking.

Then again, I thought your retort was even weirder:

"vIlo'DI' jIH, yap mep be' leH."

"When *I* use it, a plastic woman's maintenance is enough."

I also wondered if I had misheard {laH} instead of {leH}...

> but then my comeback was either nonsensical or shooting
> myself in the foot. 

Well, the way I heard it, it sounded like you were insulting 
yourself, unless you were bragging about the quality of your 
{mep be'}.

> What have we learned here?  That Okrand wasn't kidding
> when he said to aspirate (puff air out with) your p's and t's and q's.
> Think about it.  If you don't aspirate them, it's very hard to tell the
> difference between {mIp}, {mIt} and {mI'} (don't release the sound at the
> end and see how hard it is to tell).  In English, when a t precedes another
> consonant, it's often replaced by a glottal stop (especially among us
> Americans, who tend to weaken our t's at every opportunity.  And of course
> the Cockneys).  Think about "can go" vs. "can't go."  I think I say the
> latter with no t, just a glottal stop (and no n either, just a nasalized
> vowel for the a). 

Many southern accents totally change the vowel, nasalizing it to 
the point that it should be spelled "caint".

> And I bet a lot of you do too. 

It depends on context. Sometimes I get as anal as Picard on 
pronunciation. Then again, I always remember a rude acquaintance 
who distinctly pronounced BOTH "t"s in the word "water".

Think about that for a minute.

> Listen to yourself say
> "betleH".  Listen hard.  I'll bet you're saying "be'leH".  Lesson learned:
> Say it right.  Say "betleH", and *release* that t!  Puff it out!  You never
> do it in English, but so what?  (Don't say "betlheH" either!).
> 
> Next lesson: the creaky voice in Klingon...
> 
> ~mark

charghwI'

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