tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Jan 12 12:00:22 2007

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RE: mu'tlhegh ngajqu'

...Paul ([email protected]) [KLI Member] 

On Fri, 12 Jan 2007, DloraH wrote:
>> 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>.
>
> 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".

Actually, that example, to me, is indicative.  The "long I sound" is not 
the same (IMHO) as "ah-ee"  For certain, /oy/ is not just "oh-ee"

Hmm.  Sounding things out loud (much to the consternation of my coworkere 
here), I could go either way.  I guess it depends on if you look at the 
"oi" sound in English as really being a finite phoneme, or if it's really 
just the combation of "long o" and "long e".  And then take the next step 
the say that the Klingon 'y' is pronounced 'ee' when it appears after a 
vowel...  Anyone know what the international pronunciation stuff you 
always see in dictionaries says about this?

...Paul

          ** ...Paul, [email protected], Insane Engineer **
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