tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Tue May 27 12:07:06 2003
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Re: the glottal stop
From: "Dr. Jeremy DM Cowan" <[email protected]>
> 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.
Just a minor note: it's important to remember that this stuff we type in
e-mail and read in TKD is NOT a Klingon alphabet. It is a transcription
system invented by Federation linguists to describe the sounds of Klingon.
We know very little about the Klingon writing system(s). For all we know,
they do not mark the glottal stops in any way. We DO know that the
transcription system makes the glottal stops at the beginning of otherwise
vowel-initial words explicit.
SuStel
Stardate 3402.3