tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Mar 14 12:14:28 1999

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Re: Klingon Phonetics



>>In English, a construction like "in + balance" would be realized as
>>"imbalance" because of assimilation.
>
>Well, I pronounce "in balance" with the \n\ pretty consistently, but I 
do
>have to speak in public enough to make me rather cognizant of my
>pronunciation. 

I don't mean the words "in" and "balance" together, I mean words like 
"imbalance" and "impossible" where the prefix "in-" undergoes 
assimilation.

In Klingon, we know that adjacent <t>'s, as in <SottaH>, are
>ocassionally reduced to one, though Okrand is careful to point out that
>older Klingons are not as prone to this error as youngsters - it is, 
after
>all, inaccurate. 

The process you are describing is called degemination and is quite 
common in many languages. I would not consider degemination an "error" 
anymore than I would assimilation. They are natural processes in 
phonetics.

Johnny B.
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