[tlhIngan Hol] lawn mower

SuStel sustel at trimboli.name
Tue Jul 26 10:17:06 PDT 2016


You wouldn’t seriously speak of “mowing” someone’s hair, and you 
wouldn’t seriously speak of *chIp*-ping the *magh* or *magh yotlh.* We 
don’t know if Klingons have a separate word for /mow,/ and in that 
absence the only correct choice is *pe’*/cut./

As for Klingon lawn maintenance, I’m not so ready to compare my own 
motivations to those of Klingons. Whenever we see Klingon residences it 
seems to be in cities or on mountains. They seem to prefer stone and 
metal over foliage. A Klingon guide in /Conversational Klingon/ found a 
power station to be beautiful, even though it smelled and stung the 
Terran’s eyes.


On 7/26/2016 12:29 PM, Elizabeth Lawrence wrote:
> I will come down strongly on the side of <<magh chIpwI'>>  because the 
> maintenance trimming we do to lawns is definitely more clearly 
> conveyed by <<chIp>> and I think that "grass cutter" makes sense in 
> any language, even if, like English, it is not the preferred word, 
> whereas "Lawn cutter" might not make sense if it was not preferred.  
> Furthermore, I doubt there is a specific set phrase for it in Klingon, 
> because lawn maintenance seems like a useless waste of time to me; it 
> must me much moreso to a Klingon.
>
> be''etlh
>
> On Tue, Jul 26, 2016 at 11:43 AM, Felix Malmenbeck <felixm at kth.se 
> <mailto:felixm at kth.se>> wrote:
>
>>     Lawn mowers are also called grass cutters...
>
>     Very true, and the most common variant likely varies quite
>     unpredictably from language to language.
>
>     In Swedish we only say "grass cutter" (gräsklippare), and saying
>     "lawn mower" (gräsmattsklippare) would sound really weird.
>     However, both Danish and Norwegian (both Bokmål and Nynorsk)
>     apparently use both "grass cutter" (gressklippar, grasklippar,
>     græsslåmaskine) and "lawn cutter" (plenklippar, plenklipper,
>     plæneklipper).
>
>     Considering the fact that not even the Scandinavian languages an
>     make up their mind, I doubt we'll be able to deduce the preferred
>     Klingon construction sand word-of-God/Maltz. However, both «magh
>     pe'wI'» and «magh yotlh pe'wI'» should get the idea across to any
>     Terran Klingon-speakers (or at least those comfortable with
>     English, which is the vast majority).
>
>     I personally kind of like «magh chIpwI'», but perhaps that's for
>     more detailed sculpting.
>     ...or treacherous barbers.
>
>
>     26 juli 2016 kl. 16:14 skrev SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name
>     <mailto:sustel at trimboli.name>>:
>
>>     Lawn mowers are also called grass cutters...
>
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-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name

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