tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jul 05 11:27:44 2002
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Questions and Inflections
From: "Sangqar (Sean Healy)" <[email protected]>
> I would be interested to know whether there are questions on the
audiotapes,
> and whether the speakers changed their inflection.
There are several questions on the audiotapes, all of them spoken by Marc
Okrand. As I recall, he tends not to inflect them specially (that I can
tell) for questions. Not even the "question" /pu'HIchwIj Daleghpu'/ (in the
section of PK about dialects), which is missing its /-'a'/, is inflected in
any special way that I can hear. On the other hand, Okrand is not a native
speaker. (And I think the real story here is that Okrand was worrying more
about getting the language right at all, and not rules for inflection.)
We DO hear natively-spoken Klingon in the movies, including questions.
Kruge asks Valkris something in the form of a statement, /vaj Daleghpu'?/
(Hmm, another /legh/ . . . .) and inflects it exactly as an English speaker
would inflect the equivalent question. Klaa asks Vixis /latlh?/ and also
inflects it as an English speaker would. (And, of course, the actors are
ACTING, and part of that is choosing the inflection for their own words. I
doubt there was ever a time during filming where Okrand worried about their
inflections; he was surely relieved when they managed to say their lines at
all!)
I've always been curious about Klingon inflection myself. It'd be great to
see something about it in HolQeD, but most of the evidence is rather
suspect.
SuStel
Stardate 2509.7