tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Mar 10 11:23:59 1999
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Re: Klingon Phonetics
- From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Klingon Phonetics
- Date: Wed, 10 Mar 1999 14:23:56 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time)
- In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>
- Priority: NORMAL
On Wed, 10 Mar 1999 10:38:17 -0800 (PST) John Bowman
<[email protected]> wrote:
> 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,
I think it would be quite rare in the form you describe. Clipped
Klingon reaches for the same end, and we do have {nuqneH}
replacing {nuq DaneH} and such, but what you describe would only
strike me as poorly pronounced Klingon.
> 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.
Okrand seems proud of some of the difficult consonant
combinations. I had thought {rgh} was one, but he points out
that {Dt} or {tD} are far worse, since one is dental and the
other is retroflex. {HaDta'} or {HotDI'}. It is nearly
impossible to pronounce these well quickly. Most Klingon
speakers I know would just pronounce them sloppily, but that
would never evolve, like "imbalance" to change spelling.
> (No Borg jokes, please.)
Shoot.
> 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"?
That's the first and only so far. I think Okrand just felt like
doing it. Perhaps respect for Pickard was sufficient to bring
his name over with more accuracy to the original than even the
name "Enterprise".
> Johnny B.
> Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
charghwI' 'utlh