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

[Daniel Dadap]

> On Apr 13, 2019, at 18:12, MorphemeAddict <lytlesw at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> mayqel seems to be using a higher standard of acceptability for new words than natural/human languages use, namely that ONLY words from Marc Okrand himself are acceptable. This is generally acknowledged, at least on this list

Sure, I recognize that the usual and normal behavior of languages pulling in new words from other languages doesn’t really apply 100% to Klingon, since there is only a single source for new words. I think where we disagree is that I don’t think that transliterating a word into Okrandian Latin orthography or pIqaD is equivalent to claiming it’s a Klingon word, and it appears that mayqel does.

There’s actually a whole class of canonical words that bug me precisely because they’re obviously transliterations of proper nouns that originated on Earth. I’m talking about {DenIb}, {reghuluS}, and {'orayya'}. Okay, it makes sense for Humans to call people Denebians, Regulans, and Orions if they come from Deneb, Regulus, or the general direction of Orion compared to Earth, but why would Klingons use those names? It’s hard to think of an in-universe explanation that makes sense. Was all of the Klingon Empire’s early contact with these people mediated by Earth or the Federation? Are those names actually based on native names, and they just coincidentally sound like names out of Earth’s astronomical charts? And don’t get me started on Romulus and Remus…