tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Mon May 26 23:11:51 2003
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RE: the glottal stop
From: David Hand [mailto:[email protected]]
Subject: Re: the glottal stop
>In English, the glottal stop is assumed when a vowel begins a word. In
Klingon, few (no?) words begin with vowels, because the glottal stop is
not assumed.
In English and Klingon (and every language I've ever studied), no words
exist that begin with a "pure" vowel sound. A glottal stop always
precedes the vowel. A difference between English and Klingon is that in
English we do not mark this phenomenon and mostly don't even realize its
existence and in Klingon it is physically marked on the written word and
even called a letter of the alphabet.
The above relates to words in isolation only. One of the other
differences between Klingon and the Earth languages I have studied is
the maintaining of the glottal stop in Klingon. English (and again, all
the foreign languages I have studied) tends to allow a final consonant
sound of the previous word to liaison with the following vowel. English
does, however, usually leave the glottal stop in place when the
preceding word ends in a vowel sound (and it seems alone in that). I
definitely say, "He 'eats, and, "'I 'eat_an_apple." Leaving the glottal
stop off "eat" in these cases sounds very rural to me.
>In English, to indicate that there is no glottal stop preceding a word
that begins with a vowel, we use an "h". Consider "hate" and "ate".
They have the same sounds but for the glottal stop that begins the
latter.
I disagree with this. I'm no trained linguist, but I hear the air
flowing for the 'h' before the voicing of the vowel. I get the
impression that a "pure" vowel begins voicing right away, but starts
with an open throat. An initial vowel in English is begun with the
throat closed and a small explosion into the voicing of the vowel.
Since English doesn't have words begin with a "pure" vowel, the brain
must decide if the person intended to put an "h" there or failed to
start with their epiglottis stopped. I think our brains usually assume
there was a moment of unvoiced sound that passed so fast that we didn't
hear it. So, our brain distinguishes little between an "h" and a "pure"
vowel. But there is a difference.
Jeremy