On Tue, Jul 11, 2017 at 10:40:53AM +0300, mayqel qunenoS wrote:
In the tkd it says:
"{Q} This is like nothing particularly noteworthy in English. It is an overdone Klingon {q}. It is identical to {q} except that it is very guttural and raspy and strongly articulated, somewhat like a blend of Klingon {q} and {H}".
On the other hand, it is my impression that whenever I hear the word {Qo'noS} I actually hear "Kronos"; my problem being that I hear an "r" being spoken, which according the tkd shouldn't be there.
Is there something here I am missing ?
The Klingon {Q} is a uvular affricate, represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet as [qχ] (there's usually a tie bar on top as well, but I'm not sure how to type that at the moment). What's likely going on is this: if I remember correctly, your native language is Greek (correct me if I'm wrong on that?), which has a sound similar to [χ] ([x], which confusingly is written as <χ> in the Greek alphabet) and a sound similar to [q] ([k]), but usually doesn't put those two sounds together at the beginning or end of a word the way Klingon does. On the other hand, both in Greek and in English, the cluster /kr/ is very common at the beginning of a word, leading a native speaker of either language to more naturally assume that that's what they are hearing, rather than [qχ]. Add to that the fact that in languages like German (and in the speech of many Germans speaking other languages) the sound written as and etymologically related to /r/ is pronounced as [ʁ], which is the voiced equivalent to [χ] and easy to confuse with it after a voiceless consonant like [q], and it becomes clear why Klingon {Q} sounds a lot like /kr/ to many of our ears. For what it's worth, Swiss German also has the sound represented by {Q}, and I distinctly remember my mother (and myself as well) interpreting it as /kr/ when we first heard it in Swiss place names such as "Wipkingen". - SapIr