[Tlhingan-hol] Pronouncing Klingon correctly

[Rohan Fenwick]

ghItlhpu' Anthony, jatlh:
> This subject is handled in the book "Klingon for the Galactic Traveller",
> which I have. But it omits one source of trouble. I am British and I
> pronounce {t} and {d} correctly everywhere, naturally from babyhood.

Calling it "correct" assumes an inherent superiority of British English over US English (and my native Australian English, come to that). Some might say, equally, that even British English dialects like Cockney, Yorkshire, and Lancashire pronounce /t/ "wrongly" too in glottalising it in a wide array of contexts. (In fact, I'm not sure there are many dialects outside of London that regularly retain an oral /t/ in all positions.)

taH:
> But most Americans seem to mishandle {t}, pronouncing it as {d} except
> at starts of words, e.g. "latter" as "ladder".

This is called "intervocalic flapping" and is a regular phonological process in several non-British English dialects (US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand). It results in a phonological merger of /t/ and /d/ in intervocalic positions: a notable minimal pair is "latter" vs. "ladder", which are indistinguishable for most speakers of these varieties. But to call this "wrong" or a "mishandling" is ethnocentric: it's only "wrong" if you assume that there is only one "right" way to speak. In Klingon, we see a similar thing in the Krotmag dialect: /b/ and /m/ fall together into /m/, such that {bagh} "tie" and {magh} "betray" are both pronounced as {magh}. Krotmag is a non-standard dialect, but that doesn't make it "wrong" to speak this way - it's just not the same as the prestige dialect.

taH:
> And many seem to mishandle {d} also, inside words or at the ends
> of words, slurring it or dropping it. And this may carry across into
> their pronunciation of Klingon. (I wonder if this is why Marc Okrand
> chose the opposition {t} (not retroflex) versus {D} (retroflex). to
> distinnguish.)

Let me put it this way: I have quite a bit of experience with Klingon spoken by native speakers of American and Canadian English, and all of them seem to be just fine with their {taymey}. It's never been an issue I've heard to be a problem. Whether that was Marc's reasoning behind the t/D distinction I can't say for certain, but I'd always heard it was just because few Earth languages have such combinations.

Those who've spoken to me in voice conversations, have any of you ever had trouble with distinguishing {tay} in my speech?

taH:
> (OK, OK, 'ej jiQagh, with the {r} sound, dropping it at the ends of
> syllables as in standard British English, e.g. pronouncing "Thor"
> the same as "thaw", and "horse" as "hawss".)

I don't think any English dialect exists that shows all of the splits and none of the mergers found in other dialects. In Australian English we have a phonemic length distinction between /æ/ and /æ:/, for instance (minimal pairs are rare, but do exist); I don't believe any other English dialect possesses this split.

It's possible Klingon is the same, for that matter. From KGT we only know of mergers, not splits, such that {ta' Hol} has the largest phonemic inventory of any known Klingon dialect. But dialects may exist where there are splits we don't know about: maybe one of them preserves the ancient no' Hol distinction between *{sy} and *{sr}, for instance, or retains phonemic vowel length (as seen in the no' Hol verb *{'qoot} "to destroy" or the plural suffix *{-maa}. Who knows?

QeS 'utlh
 		 	   		  
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