tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon Feb 26 21:49:11 2001
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re: FW: Pronunciation [was RE: K'Zhen Zu-Merz]
ja' SarrIS:
>Also, I believe you are misusing the term dipthong, since, as I understand
>it, a dipthong is the combination of two or more vowels or two or more
>consonants to form a new sound which is quite different from the
>combination of the two sounds made sequentially, like "th" in "South" is
>different from a "t" followed by an "h", or "ou" in "tough" is different
>from an "o" sound followed by a "u" sound.
No, you're confusing diphthongs and digraphs. Diphthongs are a
phonetic/phonological concept. You're talking about various spellings in
the written representation of the sounds, which is not terribly relevant
here. The Klingon spelling we use is completely regular, at least in
theory.
qe'San is right; diphthongs are defined as a vowel sound blending into
another vowel sound. He is also [mostly] wrong to consider Klingon {w} to
be a vowel in a word like {qaw}.
[By the way, two vowels next to each other don't have to form a diphthong.
The words "cooperate" and "reality" both start with two syllables separated
by what I think are termed "abutted" vowels, where each vowel sound retains
its distinctiveness.]
-- ghunchu'wI' 'utlh