[tlhIngan Hol] Words from The Little Prince

Felix Malmenbeck felixm at kth.se
Sat Sep 1 02:34:32 PDT 2018


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

Well, Terran country names seem to stand on their own, and based on the gloss I would expect the same here, but I suspect that it may depend on the speaker's familiarity with the place, or the listener's anticipated familiarity.

When speaking to a Terran Klingon, «SaHa'ra'» would probably suffice, but when speaking to an audience of Klingons who haven't taken Earth studies 101, you may need to specify «tera' yuQ 'avrI'qa' yuwey Sa'Hara' Deb».

//loghaD
________________________________
From: tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol-bounces at lists.kli.org> on behalf of De'vID <de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, September 1, 2018 7:42:07 AM
To: tlhIngan-Hol
Subject: Re: [tlhIngan Hol] Words from The Little Prince



On Fri, 31 Aug 2018 at 16:30, Lieven L. Litaer <levinius at gmx.de<mailto: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 ? originally meant "cycle", but now means "week". However, it's still used with its "cycle" meaning in the compound ?? (? 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 ?? and ?? don't make much sense, and ?? 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
a?-?a?ra' 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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