On Wed, Jul 19, 2017 at 12:17 PM, Steven Boozer <sboozer@uchicago.edu> wrote:

Oddly, I couldn’t find any examples of invective used in the paq’batlh. Perhaps they’re considered inappropriate in religious/classical literature - even for Klingons! (qunnoq, are there any in the Iliad or Odyssey, or have these texts been expurgated over the centuries?)

I'm pretty sure there's at least one {jay'} in there. The English line started as something like "Curse this Klingon...", but I don't remember the exact line nor where in the book it was.

And finally in the TNG episode "The Mind's Eye" when Picard failed to convince Governor Vagh that the Federation wasn't supplying weapons to Kriosian rebels, Vagh shouted: "You speak the lies of a *tah-keck*!" Picard calmly leaned forward and replied, "*Qu'vatlh guy'cha b'aka!*" Vagh complimented him: "You swear well, Picard. You must have Klingon blood in your veins." (Spellings from the closed captions).

Obviously the writers just strung some words together, but Vagh accepted it.

Did the TV show lines come before or after their appearance in TKD? I thought a lot of Klingon curses started out as TV-Hol that got retconned into being real words.

Someday I'd like to hear from Maltz about what makes Klingon curses into curses and not merely just insults. What concepts do they consider profane or vulgar, what are the etymologies of their curse words (real or folk), that sort of thing. (I'm also curious about if there are other categories of profanity besides epithets, interjections for bad situations, and {jay'}.)