On Wed, Jan 25, 2023 at 8:09 PM James Landau via tlhIngan-Hol < tlhingan-hol@lists.kli.org> wrote:
I wondered what Klingons would call a cannonball in the swimming pool. I wondered if the war-ready Klingon people would derive it from their word for a ballistic cannonball, the way English speakers do.
Maybe not. French calls it "bombe". Spanish is "bomba". Hebrew looks like it calls it either a bomb or a cannon. We don't know what Klingons would call the act of jumping into a pool in order to make a big splash. Worf seems averse to swimming in the first place, so Klingons might not even have pool-related jargon.
So what was the word for "cannonball", I asked myself.. I figured they'd say *tal* plus whatever the word for bullet was, right? But I checked the dictionary -- no word for bullet. No word for projectile. Not even a word for ballista. Considering the Klingons are notorious for talking about battle all the time, I thought we'd just HAVE to already have a word for projectiles -- one we could put after *HIch* to make a word for "bullet" or put after *tal* to make a word for "cannonball". But I can't seem to find one.
Am I missing something?
You're missing the noun {nIch} "ammunition". However, you're also missing the noun {bobDar} "splash". I think {bobDar'a'} would be a perfectly appropriate word to describe a "cannonball jump" -- or at least the relevant result of one. -- ghunchu'wI'