[tlhIngan Hol] Bullets in Klingon

Alan Anderson qunchuy at alcaco.net
Wed Jan 25 19:04:05 PST 2023


On Wed, Jan 25, 2023 at 8:09 PM James Landau via tlhIngan-Hol <
tlhingan-hol at lists.kli.org> wrote:

>
> I wondered what Klingons would call a cannonball in the swimming pool. I
> wondered if the war-ready Klingon people would derive it from their word
> for a ballistic cannonball, the way English speakers do.
>

Maybe not. French calls it "bombe". Spanish is "bomba". Hebrew looks like
it calls it either a bomb or a cannon. We don't know what Klingons would
call the act of jumping into a pool in order to make a big splash. Worf
seems averse to swimming in the first place, so Klingons might not even
have pool-related jargon.


> So what was the word for "cannonball", I asked myself.. I figured they'd
> say *tal* plus whatever the word for bullet was, right? But I checked the
> dictionary -- no word for bullet. No word for projectile. Not even a word
> for ballista. Considering the Klingons are notorious for talking about
> battle all the time, I thought we'd just HAVE to already have a word for
> projectiles -- one we could put after *HIch* to make a word for "bullet" or
> put after *tal* to make a word for "cannonball". But I can't seem to find
> one.
>

> Am I missing something?
>

You're missing the noun {nIch} "ammunition".

However, you're also missing the noun {bobDar} "splash". I think
{bobDar'a'} would be a perfectly appropriate word to describe a "cannonball
jump" -- or at least the relevant result of one.

-- ghunchu'wI'
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