On May 14, 2019, at 00:09, nIqolay Q <niqolay0@gmail.com> wrote:

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.

Ah, that text makes it clear that {Qur} (which I had misremembered as {qur} came from {qurbuSwI'}, and not the other way around. Interesting; thanks.


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. 

Except that the usual context in which English loses aspiration on aspirate stops (when they are part of a consonant cluster with an initial /s/) is illegal in Klingon phonology. But maybe Morskan allows more types of consonant clusters than standard Klingon does, if “Morska” is a semi-faithful rendition of what Morskans call their home. The speaker was Dr. Okrand himself, and the lack of aspiration was systematic enough that it seemed quite intentional. (FWIW at least one of the apparently non-aspirated /p/ sounds might have been a /b/, but it’s a little hard to tell.)