[tlhIngan Hol] Klingon Word of the Day: rech

[Will Martin]

I believe that the “core vocabulary” concept is based on a theory that ignores the nature of language, replacing reality, a.k.a. the concept of “stuff that the population using THIS language talks about” with a fictional concept of some universal group of things that all populations talk about. There is no universal person. IDIC.

Jargon is the most obvious exclusion from core vocabulary. Meanwhile, we can’t agree on the boundary between one person’s core words that another person thinks is jargon.

We have a lot of words in Klingon that are, to the general American population, jargon, because they refer to the Star Trek fictional Universe. We also have a lot of words that are proper names of 21st century nations, here on Earth, that any Star Trek Universe Klingon would consider jargon, since only Terran historians would have any use for these words.

It’s curious that Klingon has the term {Hut’In vIl}, yet they haven’t bothered with a set word or phrase for a screwdriver, for instance.

Then again, in the 1700s, here on Earth, a “screw driver” was a hammer, since many screws were coarse-threaded, very strong-holding nails “driven” in with a hammer. Finer threaded screws were turned with a “screw turner”. You also might use a screw turner to remove a screw that had been installed with a hammer.

So, what’s the phrase that Klingons use for the tool that installs or removes screws? We can only guess.

Is religious vocabulary jargon or universal? (I vote jargon, since, for example, early missionaries trying to translate the Bible into Native American languages were stunned to discover that many of these languages had no word for “god”, “heaven”, “devil”, etc..) 

Are food words universal? Would a fruitarian tribe in a jungle have a word for “meat”? Do all languages have the generic and separate words for “fruit” and “vegetable”? English doesn’t have a generic, common word for “edible plant” without this distinction that I’m aware of. “Roast, bake, fry” would likely not be core vocabulary for a culture that eats food raw.

The real issue here is a search for a minimal vocabulary that one person who speaks multiple languages would like to have on hand for all the languages that that one person speaks, including whatever jargon that person is drawn to include, noting where specific vocabulary is missing in each language, more elegantly spoken in other languages.

Since we are not one person, and we each favor certain collections of words, that means that each of us has to find a core vocabulary that works for us. There’s a personal drive to help others by offering them our version of a core vocabulary, but despite the positive intent, the effort is probably misguided.

Qov learned the entire Klingon vocabulary (when it was smaller). She could easily have insisted that THAT IS the core vocabulary. Meanwhile, Klingon vocabulary has grown to the point that I don’t know anyone now who claims to have current, conversational-level access to the entire Klingon vocabulary. Then again, I am out of touch.

So, each pair of us attempting to have ongoing conversations in Klingon will, through habit, form a core vocabulary between those two speakers. Most of that will apply between each and any third person, and, as in natural languages, the whole of the population will have most frequently used and familiar words, but any new pairing will involve at least one of the two having to look up words the other one thinks is “core”, and there will be words that one thinks is core and the other absolutely refuses to be forced to memorize, because that word is nothing close to the other person’s core.

pItlh

charghwI’ ‘utlh
(ghaH, ghaH, -Daj)




> On Oct 22, 2023, at 12:52 AM, Alan Anderson via tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol at lists.kli.org> wrote:
> 
> On Oct 21, 2023, at 8:09 PM, James Landau via tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol at lists.kli.org> wrote:
>> The LCV now stands at 12,419 entries + 1,000 names.
>> And that, my friends, is the story of the Landau Core Vocabulary.
> 
> I’m unable to reconcile the myriad words with the “core vocabulary” concept.
> 
> -- ghunchu'wI'
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