[Tlhingan-hol] Defiant

[Will Martin]

I’m not a linguist. So, I’m faking it as an amateur in the following message. Just because I’m not official, it doesn’t mean I haven’t been listening to actual linguists here and learned a few things that I’d like to pass on.

While there is no canon way to say “Defiant” in Klingon, and your transliteration is reasonably good, I’d suggest {DI’vay’ent} or {DIvay’ent}. There is no “f” in Klingon, and the {v} is often substituted in transliterations, and I definitely use a subtle glottal stop between the “i” and “a” when I say “Defiant”. The “i” and “a” don’t blend together as they do in “via”.

I suspect it’s due to the way we shift from high (i, e) to low vowels (a, o, u) vowels naturally, as in “tick tock” but never “tock tick”, “nicknack” and never “nacknick”. In “via” the “i” is pronounced as a long “e”, like “veeeyah” (high to low vowel glide), but in “Defiant”, the “i” is pronounced “ah”, which is lower than the schwa of the “a”, so we break it, either with a glottal stop, or an inserted “y” sound, and we’ve already used the {ay} to represent the long “i” (“eye”) sound…

So, I guess it might also be transliterated as {DIvayyent}, if you are really bothered by the glottal stop.

There is no singular right way to transliterate. But using “f” is not really okay, since Klingons don’t have that phoneme in their language.

So, my vote is for {DIvay’ent}, though several others are acceptable.

pItlh
lojmIt tI'wI'nuv



> On Nov 2, 2015, at 10:41 AM, qunnoQ HoD <mihkoun at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> since the defiant is shown in episodes where klingon/klingons appear too,i have been wondering how are we to say <<defiant>> in thlIngan.
> 
> I don't know if it has a canon name,so at first I searched if there is a klingon verb meaning <<to defy>>,but i found none. so next I thought of how would one translate/describe the meaning of <<defiant>> in klingon.
> 
> but I didn't get far with that thought,because this thought occured to me..
> 
> whenever lets say an english ship arrives at a greek port,no greek authority would go about translating her name in greek ; it would either write her name in english,or write in greek her english name (the way it is pronounced).
> 
> so I think that maybe the most logical thing to do,was for a klingon to simply say {DIfayant}
> 
> is there a canon way,to say defiant ?
> 
> qunnoQ HoD
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