tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Feb 04 15:04:53 2011

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Re: tato'eba' yImuv 'ej mu'tlheghmey tImugh!

Andrà MÃller ([email protected]) 

2011/2/5 Robyn Stewart <[email protected]>
>
> >@Robyn:
> >Yeah, the "gh" sound is not so close to the /k/ in that syllable, so maybe
> >{jungqo} would be closest (not {jong}, though; I doubt Klingon speakers
> >would let their pronunciation be influenced by the pinyin spelling).
>
> That would be a known and previously problematic
> Canadian/US "o" difference. My spelling was
> derived from listening to the clip several times,
> not looking at the transliteration. When I say
> poS and American will hear puS, even though I
> pronounce the o in poS the same way I pronounce
> the o in mosaic. Seeing as Okrand is American,
> I'd better go with American ears, though.
>

Well, it doesn't have to do with ears but rather with the mouth. 中 is
pronounced with a [u] or [Ê?] (full IPA: [Ê?Í¡Ê?uÅ? ~ Ê?Í¡Ê?Ê?Å?]. The spelling is
missleading. There's no "o" sound in the first syllable. I didn't hear any
Chinese dialect pronounce it with "o" either.


>
>
>I wouldn't make it trisyllabic, either.
>
> Adding syllables is a pretty normal way for
> languages to cope with unusual blends in
> loanwords. Another is to eliminate the problematic sounds altogther.
>
> >Anyways, that's not important now. The
> >problem then is, most countries aren't monolingual, some even don't have
> one
> >clear major language. Just think of India or Southern Africa.
>
> I'm from a country like that, with two official
> languages and dozens of local languages. I chose
> my words with care. India's two major languages
> are English and Hindi and both say "India"
> identically as much as I can hear and a Klingon
> transcription could render.


Yeah, but still, should the country be something like {'InDIya'} (English)
or rather {barat} (Hindi)? Difficult to say. It's not identical in these
languages.



> I definitely like botlh wo'. It does introduce
> the genericity problem that there must be dozens
> of ethnic groups named "people" in their
> respective languages.  Nether means 'eS not beQ,
> which introduces another way to do it: simply
> describe the place anew without reference to any
> historical name. I wouldn't recommend that,
> because it's too difficult to do in any
> retranslatable way, but there are plenty of
> places that had names before some explorer hopped
> ashore and said, "I'll call this place ..."  Do
> Klingons strike you as the type to ask the locals
> what a place is called?


Ah, nice idea! China might become something like "populous country", Iceland
"land of fire mountains" and Greenland "iceland". I like that idea too, but
we're not supposed to reinvent Klingon society and interplanetary history,
hehe.


I would say that if style requires
> transliteration, do what's right at the time, but
> if transliteration can be avoided leave it in the
> language of the source, or a latin script version
> of your native language if you're making it up as you go along.
>

I agree.

Greetings,
- André

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