Pronouncing Klingon ... That's The Easy Part! - Consonants, Part 1

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Last time, we focused on the vowels. Now, the first batch of the consonants, and the first of your real challenges.

Here's a fun fact about tlhIngan Hol: there are no silent letters. You pronounce every letter, every vowel, every consonant and every glottal stop. In fact, you will be required to voice them with considerable force.

Never murmur or mutter in Klingon. Make your every utterance clear and strong. It is a dishonour to mutter the Warrior's Tongue. At the very least, it is disrespectful to the listener.

And now, the first five consonants.

The first five consonants of Klingon are:- b, ch, D, gh, H.

b

Klingon b is pronounced like the b in back and battle, but with more force and even a slight puff of air.

ch

Klingon ch is pronounced as in the words batch and chop; never as in Johann Sebastian Bach.

D

Klingon D is a strongly pronounced d sound, as in door and Death. Try to pronounce it with the tip of your tongue placed against the roof of your mouth, rather than the usual placement at the tip of the teeth.

gh

The closest consonant approximation to Klingon gh is the French trilled r from such French words as règle and droit.

rgh

This is a little out of order, since this should be placed after r in the appropriate section: but it is placed here since the combination rgh turns up in a lot of Klingon words such as chargh, chorgh, largh, norgh, Sargh, targh and so on. It is pronounced by rolling the r and the gh sounds together.

H

Klingon H is pronounced similar to the ch in Bach. Though again, some effort to pronounce it with force is expected.

Further Consonants

We will be looking at another batch of consonants in the next chapter. Meanwhile, practice your pronunciation of the following words from the lists listed previously.

Dargh	(n)	tea
Doch	(n)	thing
ghogh	(n)	voice
Hegh	(n)	death
Hoch	(n)	everyone, all, everything, each, every
HoH	(n)	killing
baH	(v)	fire (weapon)
bach	(v)	shoot
chagh	(v)	drop
choH	(v)	alter, change
Da	(v)	behave as, act in the manner of
DoH	(v)	back off, back away from
ghob	(v)	fight, battle, do battle, wage war
Hech	(v)	intend, mean to
Hegh	(v)	die
HoH	(v)	kill

Note that Hegh, the noun for Death and the verb for die are the same, as is HoH, the noun for killing and the verb for kill. There are a number of similar Klingon words which are both nouns and verbs - Klingon has ways of distinguishing between such words. We will explore verb prefixes and suffixes, and noun suffixes, and their meaninga and uses, in later lessons.

Next: pronunciation of the consonants j, l, m, n, ng and p.

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