tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Feb 26 10:02:20 2001
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Re: Pronunciation [was RE: K'Zhen Zu-Merz]
- From: Marc Ruehlaender <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: Pronunciation [was RE: K'Zhen Zu-Merz]
- Date: Mon, 26 Feb 2001 12:01:37 CST
- In-reply-to: Your message of Sat, 24 Feb 2001 00:31:54 +0000
ok, a lot of snippage, but here's the part relevant to what
I'd like to comment on:
SarrIS:
> > You merely have two different
> > sounds which
> > happen to sound very similar, if not identical, except that
> > one of them
> > functions as a vowel and the other functions as a consonant.
>
qe'San:
> So you mean it functions as a consonant at the smae time as being a vowel
> sound. How?
>
I believe the difference comes because one of you (SarrIS) seems
to be talking about phonology, while the other (qe'San) seems to
be talking about phonetics.
phonetically, whether you write [aU] or [aw] to describe the sound
of <ow> in "cow" is just a matter of notation (IMO), similarly with
[aI] or [aj] for the sound of <y> in "cry"
phonologically, whether you analyze that sound as /au/ or /aw/
(resp. as /ai/ or /aj/) is a matter of how you look at how the
sound functions in a Klingon syllable.
the definitions of "vowel" differ from phonetics, where qe'Sans
definition of a sound without an obstruction of the airway is most
appropriate, to phonology, where SarrIS' definition of a sound
being able to carry a syllable is appropriate, although for the
case of German, which I'm more familiar with than Cherokee, this
sounds are usually called "syllabic" consonants, while the second
vowels of diphthongs are usually called "unsyllabic"
phonetically I believe there is little difference in "unsyllabic"
vowels and semi-vowels *when used as a second part in a diphthong*
and I agree with qe'San on that a pronounciation of {aw} with a
full Vowel-Semivowel rather than a diphthong seems to be "overcorrect";
I would have to follow a full semivowel {w} or {y} at the end of a
syllable with a weak vowel sound, similar to how Okrand describes
the pronounciation of syllable-final {'}
Marc Ruehlaender
aka HomDoq
[email protected]