[tlhIngan Hol] {'} as [t] - dialect?

[Daniel Dadap]

I was listening to “The Klingon Way” as narrated by Michael Dorn and Roxann Biggs-Dawson, and couldn’t help but notice that it sounds like B’Elanna almost always (but not totally consistently) pronounces the {qaghwI'} as [t]. Perhaps [t] as an allophone of either /t/ or /ʔ/ may have been a feature of Miral’s dialect? Or is it an idiosyncrasy particular to B'elanna?

I like thinking it’s dialect, since “dialect” is usually my headcanon for why Klingon given names often don’t make phonological sense in {ta' Hol}. Either that, or Federation Xenolinguists employ transliterations we don’t understand, or they’re just really bad at transliteration. It doesn’t match the description of any of the dialects listed at http://www.klingonwiki.net/En/Dialect, but does anyone know of other instances where a speaker semi-consistently pronounces {qaghwI'} as [t]?
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.kli.org/pipermail/tlhingan-hol-kli.org/attachments/20180520/7c999690/attachment-0017.htm>