tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jan 12 11:45:04 2007

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RE: mu'tlhegh ngajqu'

DloraH ([email protected]) [KLI Member] [Hol po'wI']

> >> I've seen /DeghHom/ used for letters, IIRC.  I think there are
> >> differences, since the letter for "a" is pronounced 
> differently if it's
> >> "aw" or "ay", even though the same letter is used...
> >>
> > They're different in English, of course, but any 
> differences in Klingon are
> > simply allophones of the same sound, conditioned by the 
> surrounding consonants.
> 
> But if your point was to use phonemes, that's much different. 
>  Instead of 
> having to use just the letter 'a' once, if you wanted a 
> sentence using all 
> the *phonemes* from Klingon, you'd need to use CaC, Caw(') and Cay(') 
> (where C is any consonant) in order to get all the allophones of 'a'. 
> Just pointing out the difference between a letter and a sound.  :)

I don't hear the <a> changing at all.
Of course <aw> sounds different than <a> because you have another letter in there that you are
pronouncing as well.  If you take the sound file for <aw> and cropped it down to just the <a>
portion of the sound, it would sound the same as <a>.

The <aw>, <ay>, etc groupings are mentioned in TKD as a warning to people that speak ENGLISH that
the sounds are different from what they would expect in ENGLISH.
When someone who speaks English sees the klingon <pay> they might be inclined to pronounce it like
the English "pay", forgetting that with the klingon sounds it would sound more like the English
"pie".
If the speaker could keep the English "pay" out of their mind and simply put the klingon sounds <p>,
<a>, and <y> together they would get the klingon <pay> / English "pie".


DloraH

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