[904] in tlhIngan-Hol
likely results of tera'ngan attempts at pronouncing `gh`
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU)
Wed May 19 04:28:47 1993
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Errors-To: tlhIngan-Hol-request@village.boston.ma.us
Reply-To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
From: A.APPLEYARD@fs1.mt.umist.ac.uk
To: "Klingon Language List" <tlhIngan-Hol@village.boston.ma.us>
Date: 19 May 93 08:27:28 GMT
I (A.Appleyard) wrote re a Strek III actor pronouncing `ghargh` as `gaH`:-
> In many European languages 'j' <is> pronounced as 'y'; and to many people
>'gh' is so unfamiliar a sound that substituting 'g' or 'kh' is likely; many
>people, particularly in France and Denmark, pronounce 'r' in their throats
>similar to 'gh', as is conspicuous in Cousteau's pronunciation of English.
Captain Krankor replied on Tue 18 May 93 16:13:09 -0400:-
> ... I don't think the foreign language explanation works very well. I
could easily see the gh in ghargh becoming a hard G, but then <I would expect
the final one to be treated likewise> ...
That was not the case in the real world in the history of English! The
Anglo-Saxons brought to England the `gh` sound, and wrote it `g`. By before
1066 it had evolved thus in England:-
initially doubled final_or_between_vowels
before/after ae e i y dj y
otherwise g g w
> and in any case I don't see how the r could be totally lost ...
`r` after vowel at the end of a syllable <is> lost in English as a consonant
(except in some regional dialects such as Yorkshire and Scottish), e.g. "barn"
as "baan", "pore" and "poor" as "paw", "farther" as "father"; it merely
sometimes alters the pronunciation of the preceding vowel. Given also the
common American habit of pronouncing short 'o' as long 'ah' (e.g. "god" and
"guard" identically, and a schoolboy spelling "narcartic" that I came across),
it is quite possible that someone struggling with a word containing the
unfamiliar sound `gh` twice in one syllable would omit the abovementioned `r`.
