Pronunciation of I.

[PinkLucy77]

I've noticed on the audio that the I sound is often pronounced sounding more like an e sound (as in bed), but the pronunciation guides I have read say it is pronounced i (as in bid). Now I'm confused about how I should be saying it. Some clarification or explanation would be great.

[Qov-jIH-je]

The experts say that the pen-pin merger falls south of a line between Oklahoma and North Carolina. Another thing that all of us KLL speakers have to watch is that we don't reduce unstressed vowels to a schwa, the sound of the vowel in but. Keep up the articulate feedback on anything that confuses you, and thanks for beta testing.

[mizinamo]

It's supposed to be like the English "short i" as in "bid", yes.

[jdmcowan]

The e and the I are pretty close in pronunciation, but they should be distinct. If you come across one where it's hard to tell, feel free to go to the sentence discussion for that exercise and we'll see if we can record it a little more clearly.

[DavidTrimb3]

I wonder if we have any American mid-westerners recording the sentences, whose e and i sounds tend toward sounding the same.

Klingon I should sound like i in pin, not e in pen.

[mizinamo]

Klingon I should sound like i in pin, not e in pen.

...and that sentence makes little sense to those who merge those vowels in that environment.

[DavidTrimb3]

Precisely why I used it. If you can't hear the difference between those two words, and you're recording the sentences, you're going to be recording Klingon e and I wrong.

[jdmcowan]

I do probably say "pin" and "pen" the same most of the time, but I can easily say the two quite differently if I put a little attention to it. In Klingon I clearly think of the I and the e quite distinctly, but I haven't done a careful study of how good I am about keeping the sounds distinct in my pronunciation. Which is why I say that if you hear one where it is not clear which vowel it is, post something in the sentence discussion and I can go back and be a little more careful.

[L-Rell]

You must be thinking of the South. As a midwestern carpetbagger, I can assure you that we distinguish between the i and e sounds and are often frustrated by the fact that southerners do not. Nothing more exasperating than spending an entire Science class listening to the teacher lecture on the ten isotopes of tin and having no clue what the topic of discussion even was.