On Tue, May 14, 2019 at 12:24 AM Daniel Dadap <daniel@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.