[tlhIngan Hol] New words from "Kauderwelsch"

[SuStel]

On 9/20/2019 1:19 PM, De'vID wrote:
>
>
> On Fri, 20 Sep 2019 at 18:01, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name 
> <mailto:sustel at trimboli.name>> wrote:
>
>     On 9/20/2019 11:50 AM, Lieven L. Litaer wrote:
>>     (By the way, it's very likely that Star Trek authors picked {qIv}
>>     "knee"
>>     and made it longer by one syllable.)
>
>     Then why didn't they just say /knee?/ I think the Star Trek
>     writers were playing the same game that Okrand does: inventing a
>     Klingon organ and not telling us what it is.
>
>
> It's explicitly stated in The Star Trek Encyclopedia, 3rd ed., p. 393, 
> that this was the word for knee. Out-of-universe, the writers or 
> director probably didn't like the way {qIv} sounded and added an extra 
> syllable. In-universe, perhaps this is a dialectical word in Kor's 
> dialect (he doesn't seem to quite speak what we know as standard 
> Klingon), or perhaps there is some technical difference between {qIv} 
> and *{qIvon}.

The encyclopedia explanation was doubtless invented after the fact to 
explain the word. I don't believe for a moment that the episode writer 
was thinking that.

If it's his knee, he'd have said /knee./ The universal translator may 
leave some Klingon words untranslated, but it can translate /knee./

Martok didn't say "I do not want an artificial *min!*" He didn't say "I 
accept your lives into my *ghopDu'.*" Worf didn't say "I was standing in 
the jungle with my *tIq* pounding in my *logh'ob*." It simply makes no 
sense for the writers to put a Klingon word for /knee/ in Kor's mouth.

On the other hand, it makes all kinds of sense for the writers to take a 
humorous line and add an unexplained Klingon organ to it, and leave it 
to our imaginations to decide what it is.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name

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