Author Topic: Dothraki pronounciation  (Read 13606 times)

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ingsve

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Dothraki pronounciation
« on: February 13, 2011, 03:42:23 pm »
From the IRC chat with David Peterson we got a little more info on dothraki pronounciation. (Transcript slightly edited to group things by context.)

<ingsve>   double ee's are pronounced like the spanish creer is that correct?
<ingsve>   as in khal-e-esi?
<DavidJPeterson>   Yep.
<DavidJPeterson>   It'll probably be pronounced differently at certain times by some in the series in various contexts. Nothing to be done about that.

<ingsve>   is there any instances where letters are pronounced diffrently than in the phonology? or are all letters pronounced the same no matter where in a word they come?
<DavidJPeterson>   I tried to make the romanization phonetic so as to avoid the need for that.
<DavidJPeterson>   However, there are instances.
<DavidJPeterson>   Should be slight.
<DavidJPeterson>   Or happen naturally.
<DavidJPeterson>   For example, vowels preceded by [q] are pronounced differently.
<ingsve>   as diffrent vowel sounds than the 4 we know about?
<DavidJPeterson>   Phonetic sounds, yes. The 4 vowel phonemes really float around.
<DavidJPeterson>   /i/ > [e]; /e/ > [E]; /o/ >
  • ; /a/ > [A] / q_ (if you know ling rules).

<DavidJPeterson>   the sound with the least variability is probably /i/.
<DavidJPeterson>   Both /o/ and /a/ travel around quite a bit in their respective areas (low for /a/; back [-low] for /o/).

<ingsve>   you seem to like the kh phoneme
<ingsve>   is that always pronouced

<DavidJPeterson>   Kh will float around.
<DavidJPeterson>   Probably more palatal before front vowels.
<DavidJPeterson>   The velar fricative will vary from a velar to a palatal fricative (always voiced).
<DavidJPeterson>   Depending on the vowels.
<DavidJPeterson>   Something like the ach-laut/ich-laut thing in German.
<DavidJPeterson>   But both progressive and regressive.

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