[tlhIngan Hol] yIntagh

[Anthony Appleyard]

About the two meanings of {yIntagh} (swear word epithet and "life support system").

Thinking entirely within the real world, some may say that it is merely an oversight by Marc Okrand which we are now stuck with.

What is the first use of "yIntagh"? Was in a bit of Klingon text which was recorded, and then the scriptwriters changed the English, so that the Klingon had to be retrofitted to another English translation? (This is how {-pu'}, originally intended as only as a verb perfective suffix, came also to mean "plural of being who can talk".) ({yIn tagh} as two words means "life lung")

Within the Star Trek scenario, it could be from two words which were formerly pronounced distinctively but came to be pronounced the same (such as "feet" and "feat"), or from two words from different traditions (such as "damn" from Latin and "dam" which was native English).