On Wed, 4 Dec 2019 at 04:22, Will Martin <willmartin2@mac.com> wrote:

Keep in mind that the movies are edited by people who don’t speak Klingon. We don’t even know if what we see is what was intended to have been shot.

It wasn't. I've heard Okrand talk about filming that scene. The reason for the weird {QamvIS} grammar was because that one actor couldn't remember the entire original line, so Okrand had to make it as short as possible while preserving the meaning.

However, keep in mind also that Okrand actually went back and retrofitted the language to the final cut of the scene, so that it's supposed to match the meanings of the published subtitles *despite* the fact that the lines may have been edited so that they no longer reflected the original intent.

For example, Rosanna DeSoto (Azetbur) mispronounced {vavwI'} and said {vavoy} instead, which is how we got the suffix {-oy}. The fact that this suffix begins with a vowel, contrary to the usual pattern, was because it was invented to fit how she actually pronounced it.

Witness the guy spreading out the map, babbling something like wawawawawawawawawawaaa.

General Kerla was the one who spread the map, and his line was {DIHIvlaHtaHvIS DaH DIHIvnIS} (the first line spoken in Klingon) which was quite clear.

The flubbed line was "We can take whole by force what they propose to divide!" I've attempted to reconstruct it, but Okrand didn't remember the original line when I asked him. The problem is that the actor flubbed the line so badly that it sounds nothing like what was intended. The only clear part is the {pe'vIl wItlhaplaH} in the middle, which I'm pretty sure is correct because it fits the translation and is in any case clearly audible. There's a pause between {pe'vIl} and {wItlhaplaH}, which could mean that the actor dropped a word in between.

He does say something which sounds like "wawa" in the sentence, which is probably what you're remembering, which is likely the verb {wav} "divide".

The word {pe'vIl} appears in TKDA (the Appendix to The Klingon Dictionary). Many words in TKDA were invented for Star Trek VI, like {qo'} and {toy'wI''a'} from the same dialogue. TKDA also contains {naQ} "be full, whole, entire" and {lagh} "disassemble, take apart", which fit the translation of this line. (I wonder if {lagh} originated as a mispronounced {naQ} in a different take of this line?)

As it stands, what I have is something like this:

Qa[ng?] wawa {pe'vIl [pause] wItlhaplaH} ho be gah

If anyone's interested to try to recover the original line, here's the scene (sorry I couldn't find a better version on YouTube, I have it on DVD myself):

https://youtu.be/ak6Gln1ACnA?t=56

De'vID