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Klingon language - Phonology

Klingon language - Phonology: Encyclopedia II - Klingon language - Phonology

Klingon language: Encyclopedia II - Klingon language - Phonology

Klingon language - Phonology

Klingon has been developed with a phonology that, while based on human natural languages, is intended to sound alien. The effect is mainly achieved by the use of a number of retroflex and uvular consonants in the language's inventory. Although natural languages use a number of different airstream mechanisms besides the common pulmonic egressive, these other mechanisms are not used. This is perhaps because these sounds are a lot more difficult to learn to produce if one's language does not use them. Klingon has twenty-one or twenty-two consonants, but only five cardinal vowels. Klingon is normally written in a variant of the Latin alphabet (see below). In this orthography, upper and lower case letters are not exchangable (uppercase letters mostly represent sounds different to those expected by English speakers). In the discussion below, standard Klingon orthography appears in <angle brackets>, and the phonemic transcription in the International Phonetic Alphabet is written between /slashes/.

Klingon language - Consonants

The inventory of consonants in Klingon is spread over a number of places of articulation. In spite of this, the inventory has many gaps: Klingon has no velar plosives, and only one sibilant.

Labials — /pʰ/ — aspirated voiceless bilabial plosive (as English pan, but accompanied by puff of air not only in word initial positions, but in all positions) — /b/ — voiced bilabial plosive (as English ban) <m> — /m/ — bilabial nasal (as English man) <v> — /v/ — voiced labiodental fricative (as English van) Coronals <t> — /tʰ/ — aspirated voiceless alveolar plosive (as English tan, but accompanied by puff of air not only in word initial positions, but in all positions) <D> — /ɖ/ — voiced retroflex plosive (as Swedish nord) " — /ɳ/ — retroflex nasal, an allophone of the above consonant (as Swedish Vänern) <n> — /n/ — alveolar nasal (as English nan) <r> — /r/ — alveolar trill (trilled as in Spanish rojo) <S> — /ʂ/ — voiceless retroflex fricative (as Mandarin Shànghǎi) <l> — /l/ — alveolar lateral approximant (as English lung, never velarized as English gull) Dorsals <q> — /qʰ/ — aspirated voiceless uvular plosive (as Arabic Qur'an) <ng> — /ŋ/ — velar nasal (as English ring) <H> — /x/ — voiceless velar fricative (as Scots loch) <gh> — /ɣ/ — voiced velar fricative (as Arabic Baghdad) <y> — /j/ — palatal approximant (as English yes) <w> — /w/ — labial-velar approximant (as English wash) Glottal <'> — /ʔ/ — glottal stop (as English blue arm, with distinct enunciation) Affricates <ch> — /ʧ/ — voiceless postalveolar affricate (as English church) <j> — /ʤ/ — voiced postalveolar affricate (as English judge) <tlh> — /t͡ɬ/ — voiceless alveolar lateral affricate (as Nahuatl Nahuatl) <Q> — /q͡χ/ — voiceless uvular affricate (occurs in Nez Percé, Wolof and Kabardian)

Klingon language - Vowels

In contrast to consonants, Klingon's inventory of vowels is very simple. The two front vowels, <e> and , represent sounds that are generally shorter and more clipped in English than the more sonorant equivalents (as English bade and bead). This, and the lack of diphthongs, enhances the sense that Klingon is a clipped and harsh-sounding language.

Vowels <a> — /ɑ/ — open back unrounded vowel (in English spa) <e> — /ɛ/ — open-mid front unrounded vowel (in English bed) — /ɪ/ — near-close near-front unrounded vowel (in English bit) <o> — /o/ — close-mid back rounded vowel (in French oiseaux) — /u/ — close back rounded vowel (in Spanish cura)

Klingon language - Syllabification

Klingon syllable structure is extremely strict: a syllable must start with a consonant (including the glottal stop) followed by one vowel. In prefixes and other more rare syllables, this is enough. More commonly, this consonant-vowel pair is followed by one consonant or one of three biconsonantal codas: /-w' -y' -rgh/. Thus ta record, tar poison and targh targ (a type of animal) are all legal syllable forms, but *tarD and *ar are not. Despite this, there is one suffix that takes the shape vowel+consonant: the endearment suffix -oy.