tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Mar 10 10:22:15 1999
[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]
Klingon Phonetics
- From: "John Bowman" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Klingon Phonetics
- Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 13:22:03 EST
nuqneH tlhIngan Hol jatlhwI'
My name is John and I'm a student of linguistics.
I see that there is no shortage of grammarians in this group, but I'm
hoping that there are some phoneticians, as well.
A few questions:
1. Does assimiliation ever occur in Klingon? For example,
tIjwI'ghom vIchenmoH (I form a boarding party)
Would "vIchenmoH" not be realized as "vIchemmoH" or "vIchennoH" in fast
speech? Sounds tend to assimilate to place of articulation in English. I
was wondering if that occured in spoken Klingon, as well. Another
example:
qonbej (It is certainly recording [or some such thing])
In English, a construction like "in + balance" would be realized as
"imbalance" because of assimilation.
(No Borg jokes, please.)
2. Klingon has a restriction that only one consonent can occur in the
coda (the end of a syllable), with the exception of the common "rgh"
construction ["ghargh" (worm) and many others]. Why is it then that when
Klingson borrowed "Picard" from English, it became "pIcarD"?
Johnny B.
Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com