Re: qepHom, qep, qep'a'

["David Trimboli" <SuStel@hotmail.com>]

From: "Dr. Lawrence M. Schoen" <lawrence@kli.org>

> 1) the general preference for using HIja' for "yes" (despite the
> potentially ambiguous homophonous imperative) over HISlaH. [Personally, I
> prefer HISlaH, and I've noted that Tad seems to as well. Hmm... maybe its
a
> Pennsylvannia thing.]

Well, just my thoughts about it (it's not an article, nor a study):

(a) /HISlaH/ is harder to say than /HIja'/.  That's not just me; to change
from /S/ to /l/ between syllables is a large change in articulation point.

(b) Marc Okrand uses /HIja'/ exclusively in all sources after TKD.  In
Conversational Klingon, when explaining how to say "yes" and "no," he never
even mentions /HISlaH/.

(c) We've only HEARD /HISlaH/ pronounced by a canon source once; we've heard
/HIja'/ many times.

(d) /HIja'/ sounds more like a counterpart to /ghobe'/, as both end with a
glottal stop.  (Not likely, but it occurred to me.)

I'll bet most (not necessarily all) people who use /HISlaH/ do so after a
conscious effort to give the alternative more use.  I did that with 'a/'ach:
most people seem to use /'ach/, so I switched to /'a/ and usually use that,
just to show 'em!

> 2) choosing to use pI' over ror (or vice versa) for "be fat" when I know
of
> no denotative distinction between the two.

Possibly:

(a) It's the first of the two words listed in the English-Klingon part of
TKD.  Without a reason to prefer one over the other, someone looking up "be
fat" uses the first one.

(b) (Just me) Because of (a), I hear /pI'/ more often, and so that's the one
I remember; it's been reinforced.

(c) For Americans, /pI'/ is probably easier to pronounce than /ror/.
Americans don't use Klingon /r/.  (I doubt this has much to do with it,
since most Klingon we use is text, and those who would avoid a word with
/r/'s in it would probably just use an American "r" anyway.)

(d) /pI'/ "fat" is part of the mnemonic for remembering /runpI'/ "teapot."