[tlhIngan Hol] elephant

[De'vID]

On 27 March 2017 at 15:32, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:
> On 3/27/2017 8:10 AM, Lieven wrote:
>
> Now on Facebook, our good friend and experience Klingonist SuStel started to
> argue it is not a canon word, just an English word prounced with a Klingon
> accent.
>
>
> WRONG WRONG WRONG. You wanna know why I argue with you? This is why I argue
> with you. You don't actually read what I write; you reduce what I say to
> nonsense.
>
> I said there's the canon of everything Okrand says about Klingon, and
> there's the canon of what is recognized by Klingons as Klingon. I said there
> are three categories of canon: native Klingon words, loan words that have
> become Klingon, and on-the-spot phonetic adaptations. Okrand specifically
> said that you should use the latter for elephant: an on-the-spot "Klingon
> version of Federation Standard." He said to Klingon-ify an English word.
>
> Other words like pItSa' and 'epIl fall into one of the two latter
> categories: loan words and phonetic adaptations. I accept them as canonical,
> but I cannot identify whether they are loan words that Klingons would
> recognize or merely on-the-spot phonetic adaptations. And neither can you.

FWIW, I draw the same distinction as SuStel.

Also, {'e'levan} and {mauS} appear to be names (which just happen to
also be words in English), so that makes them different from {'epIl
naH} or {pItSa' chab}. Note that in the examples we've seen of Klingon
terms which are loan words from English, the borrowed term is followed
by a word to indicate what type of object it is: {Sutra'ber naH},
{'anyan 'oQqar}, {bama Hol}, and so on. Klingon seems to be stricter
than English (or German) with regards to indicating noun type. For
example, in English, "English", "French", and "German" can be either
languages or people, whereas in Klingon, {tlhIngan}, {romuluSngan},
{vulqangan} are people, and {tlhIngan Hol}, {romuluS Hol}, and {vulqan
Hol} are languages. The fact that {'e'levan} and {mauS} are not
rendered as {'e'levan Sargh'a'} and {mauS Qa'Hom} (or however a
Klingon would classify such animals) would indicate that {'e'levan} is
seen as a proper name here, not a loan word.

-- 
De'vID