On 9/20/2019 1:19 PM, De'vID wrote:
On Fri, 20 Sep 2019 at 18:01, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name <mailto:sustel@trimboli.name>> wrote:
On 9/20/2019 11:50 AM, Lieven L. Litaer wrote:
(By the way, it's very likely that Star Trek authors picked {qIv} "knee" and made it longer by one syllable.)
Then why didn't they just say /knee?/ I think the Star Trek writers were playing the same game that Okrand does: inventing a Klingon organ and not telling us what it is.
It's explicitly stated in The Star Trek Encyclopedia, 3rd ed., p. 393, that this was the word for knee. Out-of-universe, the writers or director probably didn't like the way {qIv} sounded and added an extra syllable. In-universe, perhaps this is a dialectical word in Kor's dialect (he doesn't seem to quite speak what we know as standard Klingon), or perhaps there is some technical difference between {qIv} and *{qIvon}.
The encyclopedia explanation was doubtless invented after the fact to explain the word. I don't believe for a moment that the episode writer was thinking that. If it's his knee, he'd have said /knee./ The universal translator may leave some Klingon words untranslated, but it can translate /knee./ Martok didn't say "I do not want an artificial *min!*" He didn't say "I accept your lives into my *ghopDu'.*" Worf didn't say "I was standing in the jungle with my *tIq* pounding in my *logh'ob*." It simply makes no sense for the writers to put a Klingon word for /knee/ in Kor's mouth. On the other hand, it makes all kinds of sense for the writers to take a humorous line and add an unexplained Klingon organ to it, and leave it to our imaginations to decide what it is. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name