[tlhIngan Hol] same sex marriage

[Rebecca Krause]

2017

On Thu, Jul 13, 2017 at 4:07 PM, Lieven <levinius at gmx.de> wrote:

> Last month, the German government has decided to allow the same sex
> marriage. This means that a man can marry a man, and a woman can marry a
> woman. We have the Klingon verbs {Saw} for the man and {nay} for what the
> wife does. I wanted to twitter about that in Klingon, and wondered if
> {Sawchuq} would make sense. I contacted Marc Okrand, who talked to Maltz
> about that, and instead of just saying "yes", Maltz provided some more
> interesting details, including the verb {tlhogh}.
>
> The entire message is archived here:
> http://www.qephom.de/e/message_from_maltz_170713.html
>
> ---begin---
>
> Lieven –
>
> I had a talk with Maltz about this, and he had more to say about it than I
> would have guessed!
>
> First of all, he said that {Sawchuq} and {naychuq} are perfectly good
> words and would be understood to refer to same-sex marriage.
>
> But he went on...
>
> 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. That is, there
> are two people joining together in marriage who are not the same as each
> other. They complement each other, complete each other – all that kind of
> stuff people say at weddings. It all goes back to the relationship Kahless
> and Lukara had. So one of the people getting married brings one set of
> values, strengths, abilities, etc., to the marriage, and the other brings
> another (complementary, overlapping, enhancing) set. And vice versa. That's
> why, when they get married, they're not said to do the same thing.
>
> Now, you may say, if using two words for "marry" is because there are two
> different but complementary partners, shouldn't the word for "marry" when
> both people getting married are the same gender also be two different
> words? If so, {Sawchuq} and {naychuq} don't accomplish that.
>
> And, if you said all of that, you would be right. But the association of
> {Saw} with "husband" and {nay} with "wife" has been around for so long, the
> "complementariness" notion has been lost for many people. That's why
> {Sawchuq} and {naychuq} are easily understandable when used for same-sex
> marriage.
>
> In addition, though, at least in some places, people are dealing with
> gender in a way that goes beyond simple "male" and "female." So if one of
> the people getting married doesn't identify as either "male" or "female" –
> or if both don't - then what do you do? Theoretically, both use {nay} or
> both use {Saw} or one uses {nay} and the other uses {Saw}, but how to
> choose and which is which? This is particularly tricky because these two
> words are tangled up with "female" and "male," exactly what those
> identifying as neither are wanting to not express.
>
> Maltz says that, more and more, he's hearing an older word, {tlhogh}. (I
> don't know how he's hearing this – my basement isn't really equipped for
> extraterrestrial communication – but I certainly believe him.) The noun
> {tlhogh} is quite common. It means "marriage," and it can be used for
> anybody marrying anybody. The verb {tlhogh}, however, was long considered
> quaint or archaic. But it's being used with increased frequency. It means
> "marry" and, like its noun counterpart, it can be used by both partners
> regardless of sex/gender, so it's used for male-male marriages,
> female-female marriages, and everything else. Use of this word lacks the
> yin-yang connotation of {Saw} and {nay}, but it's well suited for
> expressing what the folks getting married are up to. Depending on what you
> want to say, both {tlhogh} and {tlhoghchuq} are heard: {B tlhogh A} "A
> marries B"; {tlhoghchuq A B je} "A and B marry each other." But some
> Klingons also say {Sawchuq} and {naychuq}. The choice seems to be whatever
> the folks getting married prefer.
>
> I hope this helps.
>
> See you soon.
>
>  – Marc
> ----end of file----
>
>
> --
> Lieven L. Litaer
> aka Quvar valer 'utlh
> Grammarian of the KLI
> http://www.facebook.com/Klingonteacher
> http://www.klingonwiki.net
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>
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