[tlhIngan Hol] How do you explain {'InSong} ?

[Felix Malmenbeck]

(Sorry for the spam, SuStel; you'll be getting this message twice because I failed to Reply All. latlh qabDaq qul yIchenmoH HIvqa'DI' veqlargh.)

> In his recent “Klingon 101” lecture, Okrand explained the rules of a Klingon syllable,
> though I think he forgot to include final rgh.

Ah, interesting; nice to have something firm to go on. I've been meaning to watch that, but haven't gotten around to it yet.

> I don’t do this. I don’t think I’ve ever heard Okrand do this. Klingon doesn't schwa
> vowels the way English does. Where does this idea come from?

It's primarily my observation of how Marc pronounces words such as tera'ngan and Ha'DIbaH in Conversational Klingon, Power Klingon and the like. The vowels certainly aren't omitted or schwa'd; it's more like the vowel is shortened slightly and the brief pause between syllables that gives Klingon a bit of a choppy sound is omitted, allowing the syllables to flow seamlessly into each other.

> -oy is not a syllable; it’s a suffix.

What I mean is, when appended to a word that end with a consonant, does that consonant stay part of the stem (CVC-oy) or does it "transfer" to the new syllable containing -oy (CV-Coy)? The va-VOY example - while, as you say, at least one step removed from Okrand's own mouth - seems to example that not only does it "break off" the final consonant, but it also gives stress to the syllable containing -oy, making it one (of quite a few) exception to the "last syllable of the stem unless there's a syllable ending with a glottal stop" stress rule of thumb.

I wonder if this would still happen to a word ending in a glottal stop. It's also be interesting to know how words ending with one of the permitted consonant clusters are handled. If you call your sweetkins {burghoy}, do you pronounce it bur-GHOY, BUR-ghoy, BURGH-oy or burgh-OY?
________________________________________
From: tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol-bounces at lists.kli.org> on behalf of kechpaja <kechpaja at comcast.net>
Sent: Saturday, December 10, 2016 18:03
To: tlhingan-hol at kli.org
Subject: Re: [tlhIngan Hol] How do you explain {'InSong} ?

On Sat, Dec 10, 2016 at 10:54:58AM -0500, Michael Roney, Jr. wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 10, 2016 at 10:39 AM, kechpaja <kechpaja at comcast.net> wrote:
> >
> > On Sat, Dec 10, 2016 at 10:19:50AM -0500, Michael Roney, Jr. wrote:
> > > Speaking of syllables, there are 2,541 possible syllables in Klingon.
> >
> > How did you arrive at that number? I'm getting 2625 = 21 initials X 5
> > vowels X (24 finals + null final).
> >
>
> Did you subtract the (ow, ow', uw, uw') endings?
>
No — that makes more sense now.

I guess this leads to another question, though: do we actually have
reason to assume that {-oy} can be a syllable in its own right? Based on
the description given in KGT, I've always assumed that it was never
intended to be a valid syllable on its own, but rather would adopt the
final consonant of the preceding mopheme as its onset.

Do we have any canon examples of {-oy} being attached to a word that
ends in a vowel?

 - SapIr
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