[tlhIngan Hol] pseudo-Klingon words from the paq'batlh

[De'vID]

On Mon, 1 Jul 2019 at 13:37, De'vID <de.vid.jonpin at gmail.com> wrote:

> What do people think about the following Klingon "words" from paq'batlh?
> They don't appear in the main (Klingon-language) text, but are used in
> otherwise English sentences in the introduction or footnotes.
>
> xxii. {Huy'reH} "aria style"
> xxii, 62, 87. {cha'ang} "chorus style"
> xvii, xxii, xxxv. {Qich'lut} "narrator style"
> xix. {paq'jachchu} "Book of the Perfect Scream"
>
> {Huy'reH} and {cha'ang}, at least, seem to follow proper modern {tlhIngan
> Hol} phonology.
>
> {Qich'lut} has a lower-cased "i" and an out-of-place {qaghwI'}.
>
> {paq'jachchu} has that apostrophe after {paq} and a missing {qaghwI'} at
> the end (if the {jachchu} part is indeed the verb {jachchu'}, as the
> English translation seems to indicate). On p.xxx, it is explicitly stated
> that the name {paq'batlh} is in {no' Hol} and that the apostrophe may be a
> clue to some missing grammatical element. Of course, the book also has
> sections named {paq'yav}, {paq'raD}, and {paq'QIH}. So {paq'jachchu} is
> probably just spelled weirdly for the same reason.
>
> Should {Huy'reH} and {cha'ang} be accepted as canon Klingon words as-is?
> In other words, would you expect them in a new words list? (In particular,
> I am asking if they should be listed in {boQwI'}.)
>
> The word {Qich'lut} is spelled that way all three times it appears in the
> book. I notice that in previous discussions on this mailing list, 'IQqu'
> and Voragh have both spelled it as {QIch lut} (capital-I, no apostrophe,
> space between the two words). Should {QIch lut} be accepted as the "modern"
> spelling for the purpose of look-up in word lists?
>

During our revision of the Introduction section, I sent a version of the
above questions to Dr. Okrand, noting that these words seemed not to have
been invented by him. Here's what he wrote back.

MO:
>>> You're right. I didn't have anything to do with any of the words other
than those in the text proper. In writing and workshopping the opera
({'u'}) on which all of this is based, they devised on their own or got
from TV or novels or other sources a number of words that they used
throughout. For the paq'batlh, they decided to retain the spelling they'd
been using all along. I did help with some other words that appear in the
introduction — you can easily tell which! — but didn't change the words
(technical terminology, jargon) they devised for the various parts of the
opera and story. So I guess what I say about the word paq'batlh itself on
p. xxx applies to all of these words.

{paq'jachchu} appears that way (no {'} at the end) in the program book for
the opera, so it's not a typo in paq'batlh.

(end of message)

For the 2nd edition, we've decided to retain the unusual spellings for
these words. So you can consider them "approved" or whatever by Dr. Okrand
as being in {no' Hol}.

-- 
De'vID
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