Japanese pronunciation of Klingon

[Kesvirit]

I have heard thlIngan Hol compared to Japanese, and there appears to be a tendency for those who study one to have studied the other at some point.

It is to these people in particular that I recommend chay' jatlh ((japangan)) (How Do They Say In Japan?).  Even those who haven't may gain an appreciation of the sound approximation patterns. Though how Scotty became "Mr. Charlie" escapes me, and listing Sulu as "Mr. Kato" is a bit disturbing...

[edit- For Star Trek in Spanish refer to the topic Spanish Trek Translations -Klythe]

-=- Kesvirit

[SoplaHtaHwI']

listing Sulu as "Mr. Kato" is a bit disturbing...

-=- Kesvirit

One does wonder why "Sulu" isn't used. Is it not complex enough for the Japanese vocal system? "Kato" isn't that much more complicated... I have only found the "Sulu sea" when looking for "Sulu" and excluding Star Trek. It is pretty close, but possibly not close enough for ancient Japanese to know it...

[ter'eS]

listing Sulu as "Mr. Kato" is a bit disturbing...

-=- Kesvirit

One does wonder why "Sulu" isn't used. Is it not complex enough for the Japanese vocal system? "Kato" isn't that much more complicated... I have only found the "Sulu sea" when looking for "Sulu" and excluding Star Trek. It is pretty close, but possibly not close enough for ancient Japanese to know it...

Maybe because there really isn't an "l" sound in Japanese.  The "l" in foreign words is usually transliterated into Japanese using "r", but this phoneme can sound like an "l", an "r" or a "d", depending on the other sounds surrounding it.  "Sulu" isn't a Japanese name, either (I think I read that it's actually Filipino), despite Lt. Sulu's stated ethnicity.  So maybe they just decided to avoid the whole problem.  On the other hand, I don't know why they picked "Kato" instead.

[SoplaHtaHwI']

"Sulu" isn't a Japanese name, either (I think I read that it's actually Filipino)

That would work with the bit of information on the Sulu Sea I found, which is indeed near the Philippines.

[El Payaso Malo]

Originally, "Sulu" was chosen by Roddenbury because the Sulu Sea touches all (or at least most) of the countries in Asia, and Sulu was meant to represent all of the Orient, much the way Uhura was meant to represent the entire Negro population (Star Trek crew were apparently symbols for large groups of people). That is why he had no first name origionally, to keep his specific origin ambiguous. Sulu was supposed to be "Asian," but not specifically Japanese. When his name of "Hikaru" was canonized later (in Generations, I think), he was finally specified as Japanese from then on.

[El Payaso Malo]

That was a very informative site, but I did notice two mistakes:

"vuluqan" and "vuluqangan" should be vulqan ("Vulcan [planet]") and vulqangan ("Vulcan [person]"), respectively.