tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Aug 12 21:41:35 1999

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Re: Vowels, and pronunciation advice

On Thu, 12 Aug 1999 21:46:06 -0400 David Trimboli 
<[email protected]> wrote:

> From: William H. Martin <[email protected]>
> 
> 
> >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 find the combination {-nD-} to be one of the most difficult combinations
> in Klingon.  I first started worrying about this whenever I tried to
> pronounce {SanDar}'s name.  She was unhappy that it was a
> difficult-to-pronounce-correctly name, but she also wasn't about to change
> it.
> 
> I don't have too much trouble with {-Dt-} or {-tD-}; I just aspirate the
> first consonant fully, and that gives me time to get to the position of the
> second.

The really amazing thing is that you can do that really quickly, 
like in the middle of something like your translation of "There 
was an old lady who swallowed a spider", which will go down in 
infamy. Hmmm. I guess it already has...

> >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.
> 
> 
> Was that acquaintance a woman?  I've heard the "both t's in 'water'" story
> many times before, and not from you.  Did you really know someone who did
> this, or is it just a linguistic urban legend?
 
I sometimes wish she was a legend. Her first name is Tess. I 
have blocked out her last name. She had a son named Timothy 
Gawain Wolf. She and her partner made up all three of his names. 
They thought it was cool to have descending numbers of 
syllables, and instead of it being a family name, he just had 
different people call him different names. I called him Gawain 
because that's what his mother called him. be'na' ghaH'a'? 
nImDaj muwaHmoH. wa' be' neH nIm vIwaHta'. be'na' ghaHbej 
be'vam'e'.

I was a bottle fed baby and I was curious. It was an unusual 
offer.

Neat stuff. Sweet and immediate to blend with saliva.

Anyway, she was lecturing me about my pronunciation of things in 
general. She lectures pretty much everyone about every flaw she 
can detect, and she detects a lot of them, hence my wistful 
preference that perhaps she really was a myth.

So, after lecturing me for not pronouncing the two "t"s in 
"butter", she asked for some "wat-ter". I pointed out that there 
is only one "t" in "water". She was not pleased.

Eventually, she rationalized that she was simply more 
comfortable pronouncing it that way, so she would continue to do 
so. Never mind that this is exactly the reason normal people 
pronounce "butter" without repeating the consonant in question...

Anyway, she once berated me for four continuous days about how 
I should have written her more often during one particular 
separation. I then asked her to go away and not come back. She 
has proven to be a very good friend for years now by fulfilling 
that request.

> SuStel
> Stardate 99614.2

charghwI'

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