No, I would not speak of mowing someone's hair, but I would certainly speak of trimming the lawn. <<chIp>> is glossed as "cut, trim (hair)". When hair is cut or trimmed, it is shortened for aesthetic effect. I don't know that Klingons have the notion of mowing lawns at all, and "Giving the grass a haircut" is certainly much more descriptive of what is happening than "Cutting the grass" would be to people who have no tradition of mown lawns. In addition, I think that your evidence supports my point: we have no evidence that Klingons have lawns, and some evidence that they don't. Therefore, it seems less likely that they would have a specific word for "mow" and if they did it might refer specifically to the harvesting of grain grasses rather than lawn maintenance. I will continue with magh chIpwI' as the much more evocative phrase.

be''etlh

On Tue, Jul 26, 2016 at 1:17 PM, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:

You wouldn’t seriously speak of “mowing” someone’s hair, and you wouldn’t seriously speak of chIp-ping the magh or magh yotlh. We don’t know if Klingons have a separate word for mow, and in that absence the only correct choice is pe’cut.

As for Klingon lawn maintenance, I’m not so ready to compare my own motivations to those of Klingons. Whenever we see Klingon residences it seems to be in cities or on mountains. They seem to prefer stone and metal over foliage. A Klingon guide in Conversational Klingon found a power station to be beautiful, even though it smelled and stung the Terran’s eyes.

On 7/26/2016 12:29 PM, Elizabeth Lawrence wrote:
I will come down strongly on the side of <<magh chIpwI'>> because the maintenance trimming we do to lawns is definitely more clearly conveyed by <<chIp>> and I think that "grass cutter" makes sense in any language, even if, like English, it is not the preferred word, whereas "Lawn cutter" might not make sense if it was not preferred. Furthermore, I doubt there is a specific set phrase for it in Klingon, because lawn maintenance seems like a useless waste of time to me; it must me much moreso to a Klingon.

be''etlh

On Tue, Jul 26, 2016 at 11:43 AM, Felix Malmenbeck <felixm@kth.se> wrote:

Lawn mowers are also called grass cutters...

Very true, and the most common variant likely varies quite unpredictably from language to language.

In Swedish we only say "grass cutter" (gräsklippare), and saying "lawn mower" (gräsmattsklippare) would sound really weird.

However, both Danish and Norwegian (both Bokmål and Nynorsk) apparently use both "grass cutter" (gressklippar, grasklippar, græsslåmaskine) and "lawn cutter" (plenklippar, plenklipper, plæneklipper).

Considering the fact that not even the Scandinavian languages an make up their mind, I doubt we'll be able to deduce the preferred Klingon construction sand word-of-God/Maltz. However, both «magh pe'wI'» and «magh yotlh pe'wI'» should get the idea across to any Terran Klingon-speakers (or at least those comfortable with English, which is the vast majority).

I personally kind of like «magh chIpwI'», but perhaps that's for more detailed sculpting.

...or treacherous barbers.

26 juli 2016 kl. 16:14 skrev SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name>:

Lawn mowers are also called grass cutters...

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