tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Mar 15 12:38:25 1999

Back to archive top level

To this year's listing



[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next]

Re: Klingon Phonetics



John Bowman schrieb:
> 
> >  Now to *pIqarD. the exception for the rule is that it's a name. Names
> >don't obey to rules. Look at the names in Hamlet. Others I've seen are
> >*qerq (Kirk), *qorD (Korrd), *be'elana (B'Elanna), *'aleqSanDer
> >(Alexander), *ghIrIlqa' (Grilka), *tlha'a (Klaa), etc.

> I don't see why names should be special when borrowed. 
They don't have to. But names usually have a longer history than the
language itself. no' Hol (ancient Klingon) does not follow the "rules"
of orthography either (cvc).

> Even Worf's name becomes <warIv> to conform to the restrictions of tlhIngan Hol. Look at
it's {*wo'rIv}

> your transcription of Grilka. To conform to the Klingon language's rule
> about consonents, the <I> was inserted between <gh> and <r>. 
No, not really. I see three syllables here: ghI-rIl-qa' where the first
syllable is "missing" one consonant. And actually (at least in the ST
universe) the Klingon name was there first! "Grilka" is what terrans
wrote down when they first heard {ghIrIlqa'}. Just like "K'mpec": in
Klingon, his name follows the "restrictions" {qempeq}.

> So why didn't Picard become <pIqarID> or <pIqar>?
Because Klingons hear it as PEE-KARRDD, or {pIqarD}. It's the same
problem as with the terran names that are not written in latin letters.
I don't speak any asiatic languages, but I know that in Russian, there
are many letters that are difficult to transcribe to latin, because
there is no aquivalent sound (you're in phonetics, right? Just compare
all the different ways of pronouncing the "R"!)

muHwI'



Back to archive top level