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

[Will Martin]

The main point I failed to explain well is that the more distant a place and less likely you are to encounter actual people from that place with a name for themselves, the more consistent we get with our naming. There aren’t a lot of Martians around to object to being called Martians with some other native name preferred. Germans, however, don’t really consider themselves to be “Germans”, since they have a name for themselves in their own language. The same is true for pretty much any non-English-speaking country.

Here on Earth, we are VERY inconsistent when expressing our equivalent of {-ngan} among all natives of anywhere on Earth.

Cherokee got their English name from the French, who did a hack job of transliterating something that sounds more like “Tsalaghee”, and other native tribes have English names that were actually insulting names for them from the languages of other native tribes who were on better terms and communicated more with white people. How would you like to be from the “stinking bastard” tribe, or the “coward” tribe, or the “greedy liars” tribe?

So, this suggests that since Klingons are very consistent with {-ngan} for every inhabitant of any place that isn’t {Qo’noS}, there’s a great symbolic line in the sand with Klingons on one side, and everybody else on the other side.

charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan

rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.




> On Sep 22, 2020, at 9:29 AM, SuStel <sustel at trimboli.name> wrote:
> 
> On 9/22/2020 8:47 AM, Will Martin wrote:
>> Similarly, we say that those from Venus are Venusians and those from Mars are Martians, but we say we are from Earth, yet we refer to ourselves as “terrestrials” and not *Earthians*.
> The first word anyone thinks of when thinking of a demonym for inhabitants of Earth is Earthling.
> 
> Other words used to describe us: Earther, Earthman, Terran, Tellurian, Gaian. I've even heard Earthan, though I think that was from a science-fiction character who wasn't sure what the right name was.
> 
> Also, before Venusian was popular in science-fiction, the word Venerean was common.
> 
> We also don't say moonian, we say lunarian, and in any science-fiction in which we say that, the inhabitants usually get ticked off if you call them lunatics. In The First Men in the Moon, they're called Selenites.
> 
> The choice of demonym isn't always place name + ian in English. Inhabitants of New York are New Yorkers. Inhabitants of Pittsburgh are Pittsburghers. Inhabitants of Vancouver are Vancouverites. Inhabitants of Vienna are Viennese.
> 
> Mars is kind of unusual in that it doesn't have a bunch of different names.
> 
> -- 
> SuStel
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