[tlhIngan Hol] Sound of o

[Will Martin]

While I completely agree with you, I do so with the understanding that, as in Japanese or Danish, a long vowel is a vowel literally held for a longer duration. The pronunciation of the long vowel doesn’t shift in either of those languages the way that what we call a “long” vowel shifts in English.

The Japanese pronunciation of Tokyo uses long “o”s for both of those “o”s, and in the Romanized spelling of the Japanese can be transcribed either as Tookyoo or more commonly with the horizontal line over each “o”.

My English last name, “Martin” is pronounced in Japanese as “Maatin” with the Japanese version of a long “a”. It’s still the same sound we use in English in the word “father”, but it’s held longer, and would most commonly be spelled “Matin” with a horizontal line over the “a”.

What I’m not hearing from Okrand is the English “long o” in “mow”, which glides from what I hear as the Klingon {o} into the English “oo” sound in “goose”.

Sent from my iPad

> On Jun 28, 2020, at 10:20 AM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:
> 
> 
>> On 6/28/2020 9:49 AM, De'vID wrote:
>> 
>> On Sat, 27 Jun 2020 at 08:44, Lieven L. Litaer <levinius at gmx.de> wrote:
>>> 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".
>> 
>> I (re-)listened to Conversational Klingon, and when Okrand says {lenHom} (near the end of the second track called "Klingon cursing"), it sounds to me like it does rhyme with "home" or "bone". He says something like "len-home" (but with a {H}).
> I find it difficult to distinguish between [o] and [oʊ]. The best clue to the presence of [oʊ] is that the vowel is long. Okrand uses a number of o vowels in Conversational and Power Klingon. Some of them are short, as in SoH. Some of them are long, as in lenHom. Some of them change: when he says toDSaH, he pronounces a short vowel; when he says the first syllable of that in isolation, toD, he uses a long vowel.
> 
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> SuStel
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