RE: qepHom, qep, qep'a'

[Tad Stauffer <tadstauffer@home.com>]

Lawrence:

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

charghwI':

>For what it's worth, I've always considered {HISlaH} to be something Okrand
>wrote to backfit something an actor said who couldn't pronounce {HIja'}, and
>{'a} always sounded distinctly unKlingon, considering it is one of perhaps 
>half
>a dozen Klingon words ending in a vowel and seems entirely too common a 
>word to
>deserve such an exceptional pronunciation. I've always said {'ach}.


True, some of words with multiple pronunciations probably came from 
mispronunciations. {joH}/{jaw} seems like an obvious example of that. It 
seems to me that we use {joH} a lot more than {jaw} for "lord"; this may 
just be to avoid confusing {jaw} "lord" with {jaw} "chat".

Lawrence is right that I tend to use {HISlaH} rather than {HIja'}. Although 
{HISlaH} avoids the homophone problem, I guess I like {HISlaH} mostly 
because of the sound, and because it is used less frequently by others. 
{HISlaH} sounds quite raspy; with only one {H} in {HIja'}, I probably would 
mispronounce {HIja'} by using the English "h" sound.

Hmmm... for the other multiple Klingon words for single English words (in 
case someone is taking notes to map usage):

In writing and speech, I think I use {'a} and {'ach} about the same frequency.

I don't say "thousand" too often in Klingon, but when I do, I try to use 
{SanID} instead of {SaD}. {SanID} sounds fancier to me, and gives me 
practice flexing my tongue. :-)

I believe I use {ghot} more often than {nuv}.

Although I don't use {lu'}/{luq} too frequently, when I do, I usually 
choose {lu'}.

I don't use the other words, such as "be fat", "torpedo tube", "machinery", 
etc. much, so I don't know if I prefer one over the other.


- taD