tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sat Feb 17 12:56:22 2001
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RE: K'Zhen Zu-Merz
ja' qe'San:
>But I thought <'> could only follow a vowel and TKD gives the <aw>
>construction a vowel sound.
TKD labels both {w} and {y} as consonants. The section about pronunciation
when these two consonants follow a vowel is there as a warning to people
who are used to the way English works. The letters "w" and "y" can act as
vowels in English to create dipthongs which modify the sound of the
preceding vowel, but they do *not* create dipthongs in Klingon. In each
case explained on pages 16 and 17 of TKD, the vowel sound does not change
when the consonant {w} or {y} follows it.
The simplest usable theory of Klingon phonology does not include the
concept of dipthongs, but merely treats the three cases {-w'}, {-y'}, and
{-rgh} as common exceptions to the pattern of not having abutted consonants
within a syllable.
-- ghunchu'wI' 'utlh