[tlhIngan Hol] More puns

[James Landau]

>Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2025 21:39:50 -0400
>From: "Mark E. Shoulson" <mark at kli.org>
>To: tlhingan-hol at lists.kli.org
>Subject: Re: [tlhIngan Hol] More puns
>Message-ID: <30fbe505-0976-4ccf-a521-a6e6d632de60 at kli.org>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"
>>Not to dispute your analysis necessarily...
>>On 7/21/25 9:26 PM, James Landau via tlhIngan-Hol wrote:
>>
>> pa'nItlh (aisle): "Clean up" backwards. As in the PA announcement: 
>> "Josh, clean up aisle 24!"
>>I thought of this more as "room-finger"; an aisle being sort of a long 
>extended room/empty space (but that would be a hallway?)


I didn't even think of "room-finger"! The rightmost column on the wiki qep'a' 2025 wordlist, though, says it's new instead of combined. There are a number of errors in that column, though.

>> poH (session, shift): "Hop"-ing from one employee's shift to another.
>>I feel this is a coincidence, since the other meaning of "poH" (time) is 
>perfectly sensible here, and this is just informing us that the meaning 
>extends to this.
>>>> teb (compensate, monetarily): "Bet" backwards.
>>Same with this.? The ordinary meaning "fill" makes sense as a metaphoric 
>use for compensation.


That makes sense.

>> 'abched (vitamin): Vitamins A, B, C, D, and E.
>>Yeah, that was so obvious even I noticed it.


What exactly do you mean by "even I"? Are you saying that you're usually unsuccessful at noticing puns in Klingon words?

>> 'erQen (phrase): "Phrase" os a homophone of "frays". *Qen* means to be 
>> naked, like a frayed object. "Er" is the German word for "he", which 
>> suggests that it's the form of a verb you'd use with "he", i.e. the 
>> third person singular present. Like adding -s onto "fray". Does this 
>> sound convincing?
>>>Not particularly, but it doesn't have to be.? There doesn't *have* to be 
>a pun basis for every word, but that doesn't mean it's wrong to find 
>one.? Even if what you find is totally not what Okrand had in mind and 
>is purely a figment of your imagination, it can still be a useful 
>mnemonic, if it works for you.


Food for thought.

>ngel'aH = peasant, partly xifan hol from "fellah" (Arabic word for a
>peasant)


I noticed that one too, when I started checking the ng- words for xifan puns, and was going to post on this mailing list about *ngel'aH*/fellah, but you beat me to it! Sharp eyes!

>From: e.t at qeylis.net


>qech'on -> Lithium (and/or batteries made thereof) have a high chance to 
>"catch on" fire.


Wow, I didn't notice this one! Probably because if I were Okrand and creating a Klingon word based on "catch on fire", I would've spelled it *qech'an* with an A instead of *qech'on* with an O. *tamler* and such words are spelt with A, after all.

>From: Jeremy Silver <jp.silver at tiscali.co.uk>


>There had to be a punny reason he didn't just use {puj}


+1

I was really expecting that Okrand would simply make the word for "lithium" *puj*, based on the precedent with *cha'puj*.  
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