[tlhIngan Hol] Bullets in Klingon

[Steven Boozer]

We also have {'aplom} “pellet” which would work for bullet (they may be related in English) and, of course, {moQ} “sphere, ball”.  If you’re collecting shooting vocabulary, don’t forget:

vI'           sharpshooting, marksmanship, aim (n)
DoS        target (n)
Qeq       aim (at), target (v)
puS        sight (with gunsight) (v)

Voragh

From: tlhIngan-Hol On Behalf Of Alan Anderson via tlhIngan-Hol
On Wed, Jan 25, 2023 at 8:09 PM James Landau via tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol at lists.kli.org<mailto: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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