[tlhIngan Hol] same sex marriage

[De'vID]

On 13 July 2017 at 22:07, Lieven <levinius at gmx.de> wrote:
> Though {Saw} and {nay} are defined in terms of male/female and when used in
> this way everything is fine, the idea is not simply that when men get
> married they do something that's somehow different from what women do when
> they get married. The concept is more of a yin-yang thing.

It's funny that he mentions yin-yang, because what he describes with
{Saw}, {nay}, and {tlhogh} parallels the development in Chinese.

https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?page=worddict&wdrst=1&wdqb=娶
"to take a wife / to marry (a woman)" [ = {Saw} ]

https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?page=worddict&wdrst=1&wdqb=嫁
"(of a woman) to marry / to marry off a daughter / to shift (blame
etc)" [ = {nay} ]

(Aside: Yes, the Chinese verb used of a woman for marrying really does
have a secondary meaning which means to shift shame onto someone else.
Make of that what you will.)

https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?page=worddict&wdrst=1&wdqb=婚
"to marry / marriage / wedding / to take a wife" [ = {tlhogh} ]
As a noun, 婚 means "marriage" or "wedding". As a verb, the archaic
meaning is to "take a wife", but in modern usage it's changed to mean
"to take a spouse", "to marry".

It's more commonly used in this compound (with the verb 結 meaning
"knot, tie; join, connect"):
https://www.mdbg.net/chinese/dictionary?page=worddict&wdrst=1&wdqb=結婚

Instead of saying H娶W or W嫁H, it's become common to say H同W結婚 [同 means
"together", so basically {婚chuq H W je}].

Also, the whole complementary roles thing is exactly what they say at
Chinese weddings, except instead of Kahless and Lukara, it's the story
of the dragon and the phoenix. (If you've ever been to a Chinese
banquet hall where they do weddings, you might see a mural of a dragon
and phoenix facing off. That's where the newlywed couple sits during a
wedding reception.)

I don't know if MO got the {Saw}/{nay} distinction from Chinese (it's
not the only language to have separate verbs for "to marry" for men
and women), but the whole yin-yang description makes it very
suspicious.

Another thing which was discussed recently (over on FB) which might
have come from or been influenced by Chinese is the distinction
between {pob}, {jIb}, {rol}, and {loch}. In Chinese, they're
considered four different things: (體)毛 = {pob}, (頭)髮 = {jIb}, 鬍鬚 =
{rol}, and 髭 = {loch}. I don't know if Chinese is the only language to
make that distinction, or if Klingon considers {rol} and {loch} to be
{pob} or {jIb} (i.e., whether "facial hair" is "head hair" or "body
hair"), but at least they have in common that they distinguish (have
separate words for) "body hair" and "head hair".

-- 
De'vID