[tlhIngan Hol] Sound of o

[Lieven L. Litaer]

Am 26.06.2020 um 23:00 schrieb SuStel:
> According to the Klingon Wiki,
>
>     TKD describes the letter*o*as in "go or mosaic". This is confusing,
>     because English speakers would do that with a diphthong, rhyming
>     "go" with "glow" and saying "mosaic" like "mow-saic". This is not
>     what Okrand intended. He just wanted to make clear that it's not o
>     like in "cop" or "pot". The sound still is a clear "o" without a
>     following u sound. The word*qepHom
>     <http://klingon.wiki/bin/view/En/QepHom>*should NOT rhyme with "home".
>
> ORLY? Where does this revelation come from? TKD says that *o* sounds
> exactly the same as *ow* — meaning it's a diphthong that sounds exactly
> the same as American English /go./

I will answer this, because I wrote most of it there.

I talked to Okrand at the qepHom more than once, and he confirmed it.

Okrand has also told us many times that the description of TKD is not
scientifiically perfect, and sometimes even intentionally confusing. The
point of this paragraph in the wiki is to warn some some people who
would speak "go" as a diphthong, very strongly ending it as [go-u].

(All of this is very hard to describe using written words only, and many
people even speak differently depending on their dialect.)

Listen to the sounds on the Klingon CD. When Okrand speaks a syllable
like {bom} it rhymes more "bomb" than it does with "bo-u-m" or "bone".
{bot} does not rhyme with "boat".

{HoD} is just [xo:d] and not [xoud].

Roughly said, if you say {o} as [ou] you have a very strong American accent.

Saying with other words: If {o} really were to be pronounced as a
diphthong, he would have written so in the dictionary.

(And as a sidenote, the letter {o} is sometimes spoken as [ɔ])

--
Lieven L. Litaer
aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany"
http://www.tlhInganHol.com
http://klingon.wiki/En/Hamletmachine