[tlhIngan Hol] I h-a-t-e transliteration

Daniel Dadap daniel at dadap.net
Mon Apr 15 05:57:15 PDT 2019


> On Apr 15, 2019, at 02:27, De'vID <de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> One an occasion on which someone had to express "ash" in Klingon, a slang {mu' ru'} was coined. I understood it right away. (The word, which I emphasise is made-up, unofficial, slang, etc., was *{voq}. If you're a member of the club, you'll understand it without my having to explain it to you.) 

Hah, that’s a good one. I wonder if *{voqpu'} might have worked here, but that probably would have been more confusing. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if we get a word for “ash” that’s based on a similar joke (“taySogh”, etc.)

> Persian also has just one word for "hand, arm" and one for "leg, foot". It also only has one word for "finger, toe". (English has as well in "digit", but it's not used in common everyday speech.) This never really causes any confusion, both because you can always be more specific (e.g., "leg-digit" for "toe" to differentiate it from finger), and because there are assumed defaults ("put your shoes on your legs" obviously means to put it on the end part, not somewhere else).

I always thought it would be interesting if we lacked the words {nItlh} and {yaD}. We have words for all of the members of those two classes, and there is a finite number of members, so it would still be possible to say anything that can be said using those words without them. And in many cases where you might need to say finger or toe without meaning a specific finger or toe, you could possibly say {ghop} or {qam} instead. (In fact, the reason I think it would be interesting is because for whatever reason sometimes I forget that the word {yaD} exists, and think to myself “how interesting: Klingon has individual words for each of the toes, but no word for toe” - this has happened on at least two separate occasions. For whatever reason, I don’t have the same problem with {nItlh}.)

For joint, since {DeSqIv} is obviously just arm-knee, I wonder if {qIv} might just be a general word for joints and the knee is just the default joint. (Disclaimer, since misunderstandings can run wild here: I’m not saying I think this is the case or that it should be the case; just speculating for the fun of it.) I’ve long wondered whether Kor’s left {qIvon} was a joint of some kind.



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