[tlhIngan Hol] Morskan and the unidentified “regional dialect” in PK

[nIqolay Q]

On Tue, May 14, 2019 at 12:24 AM Daniel Dadap <daniel at dadap.net> wrote:

> 2. Do we have any more examples of uniquely Morskan lexicon besides
> {qurbuSwI'}? (The notes in boQwI' for this word suggest that it’s based on
> the name of an architect, but I see it just as a portmanteau of {qur
> buSwI'}. I suppose it could be both.)
>

It started as a joke. Lieven asked if there were a word for an "architect",
and joked that his Morskan friend had told him {qurbuSwI'}, which is a pun
based on the name of a famous architect, Le Corbusier.

[I had asked in advance what Klingons would use to describe an “architect”,
> which is my job. I suggested the word *qurbuSwI’*, which my Morskan friend
> told me] Lieven
> [...]
> I asked him about Morskan *qurbuSwI’*. He said he wasn’t really all that
> familiar with Morskan, but then he thought about it a little more and said
> he did know a word Qur that might be related, though it was difficult to
> translate. The best he could come up with was “structure” or
> “organization.” He was quick to point out that this did not mean
> “structure” like a building is a structure, nor did it mean “organization”
> like an organization of people or even an organization of states. It means
> the way things fit together or the arrangement of the parts of something
> bigger. He said it could be used for “anatomy” when talking about animals.
> Though he looked a little pained when I suggested it, he agreed that one
> could say that Scotty understood the Qur of the Enterprise.
>

The last paragraph feels like Okrand going along with the joke, rather than
rejecting {qurbuSwI'} outright, so {qurbuSwI'} is sort-of taken as
canonical Morskan by some people.

In the examples above, {P} represents a sound that seemed like an
> unaspirated /p/ to me, but sounded almost like /b/ in some places, and
> {i} represents a higher, more fronted {I} (i.e., /i/).
>

The unaspirated {p} might not be an intentional aspect of the dialect.
Native English speakers often don't aspirate P in non-initial positions,
and aspiration is not a feature in English phonology, so it's possible the
speaker simply pronounced it like a regular English p. Also, TKD mentions
that in some uncertain situations, {I} can be pronounced like /i/ even in
{ta' Hol}, which I'm guessing is a cover for some ST3 actors saying /i/
instead of {I}. Perhaps {rin} when used in radio transmissions is one such
case, so it's not necessarily exclusive to Morskan.
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