Klingon has been developed with a phonology that, while based on human natural languages, is intended to sound alien to human ears. When initially developed, Paramount Pictures (owners of the Star Trek franchise) wanted the Klingon language to be guttural and harsh and Okrand wanted it to be unusual, so he selected sounds that combined in ways not generally found in other languages. The effect is mainly achieved by the use of a number of retroflex and uvular consonants in the language's inventory. Klingon has twenty-one consonants and five vowels. Klingon is normally written in a variant of the Latin alphabet. The orthography of this transliteration is case-sensitive, that is, upper and lower case letters are not interchangeable (uppercase letters mostly represent sounds different from those expected by English speakers), although with the exception of Q/q there are no Minimal pairs between case. In other words, while "tlhingan hol", meaning Klingon language, is incorrect, it cannot be misread as anything but a(n erroneous) form of "tlhIngan Hol", but "Qat" (be popular) is not the same as "qat" (accompany) . In the discussion below, standard Klingon orthography appears in ⟨angle brackets⟩, and the phonemic transcription in the International Phonetic Alphabet is written between /slashes/.
Consonants[]
The inventory of consonants in Klingon is spread over a number of places of articulation. In spite of this, the inventory has many gaps: Klingon has no velar plosives, and only one sibilant fricative. Deliberately, this arrangement is very different from that of most human languages. The combination of an aspirated voiceless alveolar plosive /tʰ/ and a voiced retroflex plosive /ɖ/ is particularly unusual.
| Labial | Alveolar | Retroflex | Postalveolar / palatal |
Velar | Uvular | Glottal | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| central | lateral | ||||||||
| Plosive | voiceless | p /pʰ/
|
t /tʰ/
|
T /ʈʰ/
|
C /cʰ/
|
c /kʰ/
|
q /qʰ/
|
ʼ /ʔ/
| |
| voiced | b /b/
|
d /d/
|
D /ɖ/
|
Y /ɟ/
|
g /ɡ/
|
G /ɢ/
|
|||
| Affricate | voiceless | tlh /t͡ɬ/ |
ch /t͡ʃ/ |
Q /q͡χ/ |
|||||
| voiced | j /d͡ʒ/
|
||||||||
| Fricative | voiceless | f /f/
|
s /s/
|
S /ʂ/
|
k /ʃ/
|
H /x/
|
x /χ/
|
h /h/
| |
| voiced | v /v/
|
z /z/
|
Z /ʐ/
|
ʒ /ʒ/
|
gh /ɣ/
|
ɣ /ʁ/
|
|||
| Nasal | m /m/
|
n /n/
|
N /ɳ/
|
ng /ŋ/
|
X /ɴ/
|
||||
| Trill | B /ʙ/
|
r /r/
|
R /ʀ/
|
||||||
| Approximant | w /w/
|
l /l/
|
L /ɭ/
|
y /j/
|
W /ɰ/
|
||||
There are a few dialectal pronunciation differences (it is not known if the aforementioned non-canon Kumburan or Rumaiy dialects of tlhIngan Hol hinted at in the third Trek movie's novelization might differ):
- In the Krotmag dialect /b/ and /ɖ/ are realized as nasal stops [m] and [ɳ]
- In the Tak'ev dialect /b/ and /ɖ/ are pre-nasalized oral stops [mb] and [ɳɖ]
In the Morskan dialect:
- /t͡ɬ/ is a central affricate [t͡s]
- /x/ is realized as glottal [h] syllable-initially and deleted syllable-finally
- /q͡χ/ is realized as a velar fricative [x]
Vowels[]
In contrast to its consonants, Klingon's inventory of vowels is simple, and similar to those of many human languages, such as Spanish or Japanese. There are five vowels spaced more or less evenly around the vowel space, with two back rounded vowels, one back unrounded vowel, and two front or near-front unrounded vowels. The vowel inventory is asymmetrical in that the back rounded vowels are tense and the front vowels are lax.
The two front vowels, ⟨e⟩ and ⟨I⟩, represent sounds that are found in English, but are more open and lax than a typical English speaker might assume when reading Klingon text written in the Latin alphabet, thus causing the consonants of a word to be more prominent. This enhances the sense that Klingon is a clipped and harsh-sounding language.
- Vowels
- ⟨
A⟩ – /æ/ – near-open front unrounded vowel - ⟨
a⟩ – /ɑ/ – open back unrounded vowel (in English spa) - ⟨
E⟩ – /e/ – close-mid front unrounded vowel - ⟨
e⟩ – /ɛ/ – open-mid front unrounded vowel (in English bed) - ⟨
I⟩ – /ɪ/ – near-close front unrounded vowel (in English bit) - ⟨
i⟩ – /i/ – close front unrounded vowel - ⟨
O⟩ – /ɒ/ – open back rounded vowel - ⟨
o⟩ – /o/ – close-mid back rounded vowel (in French eau) - ⟨
U⟩ – /ʌ/ – open-mid back unrounded vowel - ⟨
u⟩ – /u/ – close back rounded vowel (in Spanish tu)
Diphthongs can be analyzed phonetically as the combination of the five vowels plus one of the two semivowels /w/ and /j/ (represented by ⟨w⟩ and ⟨y⟩, respectively). Thus, the combinations ⟨ay⟩, ⟨ey⟩, ⟨Iy⟩, ⟨oy⟩, ⟨uy⟩, ⟨aw⟩, ⟨ew⟩ and ⟨Iw⟩ are possible. There are no words in the Klingon language that contain *⟨ow⟩ or *⟨uw⟩.
Syllable structure[]
Klingon follows a strict syllable structure. A syllable must start with a consonant (including the glottal stop) followed by one vowel. In prefixes and rare other syllables, this is enough. More commonly, this consonant-vowel pair is followed by one consonant or one of three biconsonantal codas: /-wʼ -yʼ -rgh/. Thus, ta "record", tar "poison" and targh "targ" (a type of animal) are all legal syllable forms, but *tarD and *ar are not. Despite this, one suffix takes the shape vowel+consonant: the endearment suffix -oy.
Stress[]
In verbs, the stressed syllable is usually the verbal stem itself, as opposed to a prefix or any suffixes, except when a suffix ending with ⟨ʼ⟩ is separated from the verb by at least one other suffix, in which case the suffix ending in ⟨ʼ⟩ is also stressed. In addition, stress may shift to a suffix that is meant to be emphasized.
In nouns, the final syllable of the stem (the noun itself, excluding any affixes) is stressed. If any syllables ending in ⟨ʼ⟩ are present, the stress shifts to those syllables.
The stress in other words seems to be variable, but this is not a serious issue because most of these words are only one syllable in length. There are some words which should fall under the rules above, but do not, although using the standard rules would still be acceptable.