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<div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><div><div dir="ltr">>From: "De'vID" <<a href="mailto:de.vid.jonpin@gmail.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">de.vid.jonpin@gmail.com</a>><br></div><div>>Subject: Re: [tlhIngan Hol] Klingon food vocabulary</div><div>>>On Mon, 22 Nov 2021 at 07:31, James Landau <<a href="mailto:savegraduation@yahoo.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">savegraduation@yahoo.com</a>> wrote:</div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div>>majQa'!</div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">qatlho'!</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div>>The Arabic word for bulgur is pronounced like {borghel}. It is a food item,<br><div dir="ltr">>and it's sometimes fed to birds, but has nothing really to do with their<br></div><div dir="ltr">>eggs. There are a number of dishes cooked with both bulgur and quail eggs,<br></div><div dir="ltr">>but that's a rather weak connection. Maybe Okrand just thought they looked<br></div><div dir="ltr">>like tiny bird eggs.<br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">That's interesting -- quite a likely connection, it seems!</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">I had a thought: *borgh* is probably how the Star Trek word "borg" would be rendered in Klingon (hurray for the ability to end words in the cluster -rgh!) *el* sounds like the Semitic root for god/God. Borg god, referring to the Borg Queen? (Just from what I've heard bits and pieces of elsewhere, as I've never watched the show).</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">So what's the relevance of that? Well, on a conworlding and conlanging forum I frequent, we were discussing silicon-based life not long ago, and someone referenced a Star Trek episode that involved a planet with silicon-based life. I don't remember the name of the planet, but every few decades/centuries? every live silicon-based organism dies except one, who takes care of the eggs that will be hatched. The eggs look something like metal balls, and the guardian of the eggs looks like a rusty red rock. The Starship Enterprise explorers start cracking and killing the eggs until one of them telepathically locks with the egg-guardian, who explains that she is alive and these are the eggs they're killing. So maybe a bird with edible eggs had the name *borghel* chosen because there's something egg-related about the borgs, or specifically their queen (Borg-el)?<br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">I see that Lieven has been working on the wiki page. Good. The food vocabulary page could always use some more eyes.</div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">However, I noticed that many of the non-borrowing fruit words (cherry, grapefruit, pomegranate, etc.) are now missing from the page. What happened to them?<br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr">>There are some famous people named Borgel, including a Swiss watchmaker and<br></div><div dir="ltr">>a family of Tunisian rabbis, but again, nothing to do with birds or eggs<br></div><div dir="ltr">>that I could find.<br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr"><br></div><div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Just about any combination of sounds can be a surname for some person on this planet or another, so I agree with you that the surname Borgel is unlikely to have to do with the bird called a borghel.<br></div></div></div></div></body></html>