On Mon, Oct 12, 2020 at 2:23 PM SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:

On 10/12/2020 2:04 PM, nIqolay Q wrote:

On Mon, Oct 12, 2020 at 10:45 AM Steven Boozer <sboozer@uchicago.edu> wrote:

Thanks for the source. I was perusing the qep'a' 2020 new words list over the weekend and discovered another one {DItroy'} Detroit.

Interesting example of using a glottal stop to transliterate a "t" in a syllable that otherwise already ends in a consonant.

The final t in Detroit is not aspirated the way a Klingon t always is. A glottal stop is actually closer in sound to the unaspirated t.

Aspiration doesn't seem to play much of a role in transliterations. In the case of "Detroit", you can't just transliterate the final syllable as -oyt, because -oyt isn't an allowed syllable ending in Klingon phonotactics. Sometimes, Okrand deals with this (consonant after diphthong) by adding another syllable: "Deutsch" (in "Deutschland") -> *Doych -> DoyIch. But in this case, since ' is similar to "t", and -oy' is an allowed Klingon syllable ending, you can just do that.