I must be missing something here..
Watching on youtube videos on pronouncing klingon, there are two things I noticed which confused me. First, I noticed that on the pronunciation of some one-syllable nouns which have the suffix {-mey}, the stress on some is placed on the noun itself (as it should be), while on others the stress is placed on the {-mey}, although it bears no qaghwI'. And the stress is shifted there, although these nouns are pronounced on their own, outside the context of the sentence; so it cannot be happening for the sake of placing emphasis on the plural. Second, and this is the most important, I can't understand the pronunciation of {-be'}.. But before I say what confuses me, I need to write how I understand "what stress is", because perhaps this is were the root of my problem is.. The way I understand it, when we say "stress" of a word, we mean saying slightly louder that syllable. Lets see an example. Two computer enginneers examine a malfunctioning computer. And one of them says, believing he identified the problem, "its the hard DISC", saying the word "disc" a little louder. This is what I understand when I read "stress of a word/syllable". maj.. However, in the previous example, if one of the engineers wonders whether its the hard disc which causes the malfunction, he can say "the hard disc ?". And because he is asking, his voice will pronounce the word "disc", with a "rising tone". maj again.. And now we come to the qaghwI', which as I understand it, is an abrupt end of the sound of the preceding vowel. So, now lets get back to the {-be'}, examining the example of the word {yajbe'}. According to the rules of pronunciation, at least as I understand them to be, I would expect {yajbe'} to be stressed on the {-be'} (i.e. the {-be'} being spoken a little louder), with the voice of the speaker coming to an abrupt end immediately after the {e}. And I would expect, that since {yajbe'} isn't a question, the voice of the speaker wouldn't assume a "rising tone" as it would in the "hard disc ?" example. However, I notice that on numerous occasions of videos I see on youtube, the voice of the speaker does indeed assume a "rising tone". Something which seems to happen not only with the {-be'}, but with other suffixes as well, which happen to bear the qaghwI' and be the last syllable of a word. I can't believe that all those people are doing it wrong, so obviously, I am the one who is missing something here.. And if someone could enlighten me, as to what it is I'm actually missing, I would be grateful.. And qeylIS would be happy.. ~ 'ISterlIng
On 10/14/2018 4:13 AM, mayqel qunenoS wrote:
Two computer enginneers examine a malfunctioning computer. And one of them says, believing he identified the problem, "its the hard DISC", saying the word "disc" a little louder. This is what I understand when I read "stress of a word/syllable".
As a computer engineer myself, I would never say /hard DISK;/ I would always say /HARD disk./ There is a phenomenon in English, whose technical term I cannot remember now, in which noun phrases that become lexicalized in the language have the stress shifted to the front. There is an example I heard from an old sitcom, I think it was /Seinfeld,/ in which the characters are all saying "Chinese FOOD." The phrase hadn't quite solidified as a lexical item. Now that it has, everyone says "CHINESE food." Well, it's like that with /hard disk./ When the concept was new, people might have said /hard DISK,/ but now no native English-speaking engineer would every say that; the phrase is /HARD disk./ I can't tell you what they're saying over in Greece, of course, but this is the case as I know it here in New York. English accomplishes a lot with stress that its speakers don't even realize is happening. Another pattern is that multisyllabic noun-verb pairs like /record/ or /increase:/ when they're nouns the stress is on the first syllable /(REcord; INcrease);/ when they're verbs the stress is on the second syllable /(reCORD; inCREASE)./ Klingon does not seem to have these features, so far as we can tell.
However, in the previous example, if one of the engineers wonders whether its the hard disc which causes the malfunction, he can say "the hard disc ?". And because he is asking, his voice will pronounce the word "disc", with a "rising tone".
/Tone/ is the right word, and is a different phenomenon than stress. We haven't been told anything about tones in Klingon, but actors have generally used English-sounding tones. They are not universal across languages, however.
However, I notice that on numerous occasions of videos I see on youtube, the voice of the speaker does indeed assume a "rising tone". Something which seems to happen not only with the {-be'}, but with other suffixes as well, which happen to bear the qaghwI' and be the last syllable of a word.
Usually what I hear isn't a rising tone in the manner of a question, but it is a higher tone nonetheless. If you listen to all of Okrand's recorded voice, you'll usually hear him do it too. Once in a while you'll hear something else, but stressed syllables usually receive a higher tone. Whether this is a feature of the language, a mistake, or irrelevant to native speakers is unknown. /The Klingon Dictionary/ leaves the matter of stress vague, and doesn't mention tone at all.
I can't believe that all those people are doing it wrong
I can totally believe that random videos on the Internet get Klingon pronunciation consistently wrong. There is a lot of REALLY bad Klingon out there. Some common pronunciation errors committed by students who haven't had much speaking practice: * Pronouncing *j* as /zh/ * Pronouncing *H* as /h/ * Pronouncing *Q* or *q* as /k/ * Being unable to pronounce *gh* or *tlh* at all * Trying to pronounce the vowels too far back in the mouth, to the point of practically choking on them * Ignoring *qaghwI'mey* completely, especially at the ends of words * Trying to growl or roar when speaking, because they think that's what Klingon is * Holding syllables too long * Pronouncing unstressed syllables with a schwa vowel instead of the given vowel * Shifting consonants across syllable boundaries * Just giving up completely and making up syllables Add to this list "Stressing the wrong syllables." -- SuStel http://trimboli.name
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SuStel