Klingon Word of the Day for Thursday, May 18, 2017

Klingon word: SoD
Part of speech: noun
Definition: flood

Voragh:

AFAIK never used in canon.

De'vID:

That depends on your definition of "canon". It was used in the lyrics
of a drinking song in the DS9 episode "The Way of the Warrior".

Also in VOY "Prophecy" and VOY "Barge of the Dead" apparently.  Full text and discussion at:

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Klingon_drinking_song 

Actually, that was the homophonous verb. Never mind.

I found the relevant line:

  'ej Doq SoDtaH ghoSpa' SIqral bIQtIq
  And the River Skral ran crimson red.

Before any beginners get confused trying to translate it, be warned it's not grammatical. The origin of the line is given here, and ghunchu'wI''s valiant attempt to work out what the writer had in mind is given here. Literally, the line above reads something like and it is red, it is flooding, before the Skral River goes.

A literal translation of and the River Skral ran crimson read might be 'ej Doqqu'choH SIqral bIQtIq, which simply means and the River Skral becomes red. If we remember that Klingon blood is supposed to be pink (something the writers often forget), we might say 'ej DoqchoH SIqral bIQtIq 'ej wovchoH and the River Skral becomes pink.

The point of the line is to tell how the river is filled with blood. Literally, that might be 'ej SIqral bIQtIq teb 'Iw and blood fills the River Skral. Or we might be interested in how the river turns the color of blood, even though most of what we're looking at is still water: 'ej Doqqu'choH SIqral bIQtIq; 'Iw rur and the River Skral becomes red as blood.

Oh well, at least we got actual Klingon words, even if they were put together ungrammatically and pronounced horribly.

-- 
SuStel
http://trimboli.name