Because the original of the below message was sent to the wrong address, it wasn't saved in the KLI mailing list archived, even though it was sent to many list members: https://www.kli.org/tlhIngan-Hol/2013/December/ The only references to it on the archive are replies in which the main part of it isn't quoted. I'm therefore quoting it in its entirety so it will appear in the archive here: http://lists.kli.org/pipermail/tlhingan-hol-kli.org/2023-January/ This came up because of the holidays and people asking how to say "Merry Christmas" and "Happy New Year" and so on. On Fri, Dec 13, 2013 at 2:41 PM Lieven <levinius@gmx.de> wrote:
So many people have been using the word {QISmaS}, so that Marc Okrand has confirmed it to be canonical:
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I Skyped Maltz. He said he has been asked before about "Merry Christmas" and "Happy New Year." He thought they were silly things to say (and, of course, there are no traditional Klingon ways to say these things), but he said that if you have to say "Happy New Year," you could say {DIS chu' yItIv} or {DIS chu' DatIvjaj} or {DIS chu' botIvjaj} or the like.
For "Merry Christmas," he wasn't so sure. He said that perhaps you could use the name of the holiday (which would be {QISmaS}) and say {QISmaS yItIv} or {QISmaS DatIvjaj} and so on. He thought that people who know about Christmas would understand that. He also liked my sister-in-law's suggestion: {wornagh yItlhutlh!}.
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If you understand German, you might check out the electronic Christmas greeting card on www.hager.de with a built-in Klingon greeting at the end. (click on the stamp of the card)
;-)
-- Lieven L. Litaer aka Quvar valer 'utlh http://www.facebook.com/Klingonteacher
-- De'vID