[tlhIngan Hol] Words from The Little Prince

[De'vID]

On Fri, 31 Aug 2018 at 16:30, Lieven L. Litaer <levinius at gmx.de> wrote:

> Daqrab – well. It's normally a water well, but it could be an oil well,
> assuming Klingons are aware of drilling for oil. If clarity is needed,
> one can say bIQ Daqrab. "Source" is not part of the definition. A Daqrab
> is constructed and/or dug.
>

What do you mean "source" is not part of the definition? (Is this a comment
about the German word "Quelle"?)


> DISjaj – anniversary. Maltz said there is a way (actually, several ways)
> to refer to an "anniversary," which he characterized as a specific day
> on which one recognizes or remembers an event that occurred a set amount
> of time ago on that same date. The "set amount of time" could be a year
> (what most people think of when they think of "anniversary"), but it
> could be another unit of time: a month or a week.
>
> DISjaj: anniversary measured in years
>
> jarjaj: anniversary measured in months (the three-month anniversary of
> starting a new job, say)
>
> Hoghjaj:
> anniversary measured in weeks (the two-week anniversary of the day
> someone quit smoking, perhaps)
>

Interestingly, this is sort of like how it works in Chinese. The word
週 originally
meant "cycle", but now means "week". However, it's still used with its
"cycle" meaning in the compound 週年 (年 is "year"). That is, the word for
"anniversary" is composed from the characters for "week (cycle)" and
"year".

I'm having trouble translating {Hoghjaj} and {jarjaj} now because 週月 and 週週
don't make much sense, and 週年 has the word "year" in it (much more
obviously than "anniversary" contains "year", i.e, "annus"  to an
English-speaker).

(I was under the impression that there were several Klingon speakers
who know Chinese, but I didn't get any offers to help with Chinese
translations either on this mailing list or Facebook.)

DI'raq – sheep. There's a fluffy, woolly, shaggy Klingon animal called a
> DI'raq, similar to a sheep. To distinguish, one can say tera' DI'raq the
> first time it comes up, but probably shorten it to just DI'raq after
> that. A male sheep, that is, a ram, is called DI'raq loD. It's two
> words. Kin terms (like puqloD and lorloD) are set terms, regular
> vocabulary items. For animals, Klingon doesn't have special words for
> male vs. female.  That is, English has ram (male), ewe (female), sheep
> (both/either), but Klingon has only an equivalent for sheep – no
> separate word for ram or ewe.  If it's necessary to specify sex/gender,
> it's done using the noun-noun construction.
>

qItbe'!

SaHa'ra' – Sahara (Earth desert). In Arabic, the sahara desert is called
> aṣ-ṣaḥrāʼ al-kubrá, meaning "the Great Desert." If the Klingon version
> came from Arabic, it would be something along those lines. But Maltz
> says Klingons got the name from Federation Standard, which is why it is
> pronounced SaHa'ra'.
>

Would a Klingon say {SaHa'ra'} or {SaHa'ra' Deb}? That is, is the "desert"
idea implicit in the name?

-- 
De'vID
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