[tlhIngan Hol] same sex marriage

[Rebecca Krause]

thanks for the lesson in heteronormativity Maltz/Marc but we didn't need
you to explain it to us

On Thu, Jul 13, 2017 at 5:35 PM, Rebecca Krause <
rebecca.krause.1985 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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