[tlhIngan Hol] same sex marriage

[Lieven]

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

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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
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-- 
Lieven L. Litaer
aka Quvar valer 'utlh
Grammarian of the KLI
http://www.facebook.com/Klingonteacher
http://www.klingonwiki.net