[393] in tlhIngan-Hol
Re: getting through to the list
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Thu Oct 8 18:24:34 1992
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: Ken_Beesley.PARC@xerox.com
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Cc: tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us
Date: Thu, 8 Oct 1992 14:36:37 PDT
In-Reply-To: "mark@dragonsys:com:Xerox's message of Thu, 8 Oct 1992 13:55:27 PD
Mark Mandel writes:
>I'm sending this as a reply to Ken Beesley's apt reply to my
remark on the articulation of /S/. (But is /D/ retroflex? I
don't have the dict. here. -- Of course, the Klingon phoneme set
is not very symmetrical [[ROFL]].)<
As I understand the description, the Klingon D is indeed retroflex. In
general, if you have one consonant like D that has a retroflex point of
articulation, you would expect to find a family of others, like a retroflex T
(voiceless retroflex stop), a retroflex N (the nasal), a retroflex r, and
perhaps even a retroflex s and z (voiceless and voiced sibilants). You do get
such retroflex families in the languages of northern India.
The problem is that the phonemes of Klingon are, as you note, suspiciously
asymmetrical. It almost leads one to suspect that Okrand is making it all up.
Ken Beesley
