tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Oct 02 08:20:27 2015
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Re: [Tlhingan-hol] Upper case letters
Brent Kesler (brent.of.all.people@gmail.com) ![[KLI Member]](/pics/KLImemberbutton.gif "[KLI Member]")
<div dir="ltr">I don't think Okrand's choices are random; I think they're rooted in various methods of phonetic transcription.<div>- S and D are both retroflex.</div><div>- I actually have a Webster's dictionary printed before TKD that uses H in its transcription of "Bach".</div><div>- I (capital i) looks like the IPA symbol for that vowel.</div><div>- I have no theory for Q.</div><div><br></div><div>bI'reng</div></div><div class="gmail_extra"><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Oct 2, 2015 at 11:08 AM, Steven Boozer <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:sboozer@uchicago.edu"; target="_blank">sboozer@uchicago.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
<div lang="EN-US" link="#0563C1" vlink="#954F72">
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#44546a">Hod qunnoQ:<u></u><u></u></span></p><span class="">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt">> is it known why the specific letters (written always in upper case in Klingon)<br>
> were chosen by Okrand ?<span style="color:#44546a"><br>
</span>> i mean why "S" and not "G" ? why "D" and not "M" ? and so on..<br>
> does anyone know the reason behind these choices?<u></u><u></u></p>
</span><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt">IIRC Okrand used upper case to indicate those letters which were pronounced differently from English. That is, {S} is closer to /sh/ than /sss/; {H} is like the /ch/ in Bach, not the /h’s/ in Hannah; {I} is
like the dotless /i/ in Turkish or the *<b>bI</b>* in Russian, not /eee/ in Spanish or Italian, and so on. It was simply a way of warning the actors in Star Trek III (which he coached at the studio) to be careful when delivering their Klingon lines. But
he wasn’t consistent. Why, for example, did he use the digraph {gh} for the gargled *<b>ghayin</b>* of Arabic or the uvular /r/ in French instead of G, which doesn’t otherwise appear in Klingon? And then there’s {tlh}!<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black">--<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black">Voragh<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:black">Ca'Non Master of the Klingons<u></u><u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Arial",sans-serif;color:#44546a"><u></u> <u></u></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:12.0pt"><u></u> <u></u></p>
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