[tlhIngan Hol] Klingon Word of the Day: raSya'

[Will Martin]

We don’t tend to add derivative terms that Okrand has not mentioned in canon to the various official word lists.

The official vocabulary is large, and maintaining it does require judgement calls, and at various times, ones judgement can vary, but generally speaking, Okrand can give us original words and derivatives, or omit derivatives as he sees fit and we follow his lead, rather than expand the vocabulary, inventing canon-qoq.

We could have come up with {ghojmoH} without Okrand giving it to us, and we could justify using it in our speech and writing to mean “teach", but then he could have later given us a different verb for “teach” that wasn’t derived from {ghoj}. By giving us an explicit {ghojmoH} to mean “teach”, he was informing us that we could freely use {ghojmoH} without waiting for some other verb.

We could expand the vocabulary many times over by inventing derivative words, and we do invent derivative words as needed in speech and writing, but we don’t confidently present our inventions to others as official words in the vocabulary, as if we were Maltz or Okrand.

In any language, we invent neologisms as needed, hoping they are good enough that we will be understood, but it takes time before such an invention proves itself worthy of addition to the global vocabulary, or just fades away because it was insufficiently adopted.

Klingon is only different because there is one human on Earth who can announce if a word is “real”.

Witness the famous story of {‘I’}.

charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan

rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.




> On Sep 24, 2020, at 5:01 AM, De'vID <de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Sun, 20 Sep 2020 at 19:20, Alan Anderson <qunchuy at alcaco.net <mailto:qunchuy at alcaco.net>> wrote:
> On Sep 20, 2020, at 11:54 AM, De'vID <de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com <mailto:de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com>> wrote:
>> What other demonyms were revealed in TNK? 
> 
> 
> 
> See https://www.kli.org/about-klingon/new-klingon-words/source/ <https://www.kli.org/about-klingon/new-klingon-words/source/> and scroll to the bottom for TN!LK
> 
> I see a bunch of countries like Russia and Finland, but I don't see demonyms in the list like Russian or Finnish/Finlander. Does the word {raSya'ngan} "Russian" actually appear in the software, and isn't included in the KLI New Klingon Words list because it's considered too obviously a derivation from {raSya'} to be its own entry? Or: does it not actually appear, but is considered implicitly to be canonical by some people because it's such an obvious derivation?
> 
> Do demonyms explicitly appear in TN!LK? 
> 
> -- 
> De'vID
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