On Tue, Dec 10, 2019 at 11:05 AM mayqel qunen'oS <mihkoun@gmail.com> wrote:
lieven:
Becaue I think it's larger than a {qovIj}.
maj. I was just wondering, whether 'oqranD had added to {ngavyaw'} the additional meaning of "wolf"..
Technically, it's not a wolf or any Terran animal at all. It's supposed to refer to the canine-like animals that accompanied the guards on Rura Penthe, which Memory Alpha calls "jackal mastiffs". If you were writing Klingon "in-character", you'd use *tera' qovIj* or *tera' ngavyaw'* to refer to Earth animals using Klingon analogues, but sometimes people drop the *tera'* if they're talking about day-to-day experiences with Earth animals. There's no chance for confusion, since *ngavyaw'mey* do not, strictly speaking, actually exist. There's no official distinction yet for whether a given Earth canine would be a *tera' qovIj* or a *tera'* *ngavyaw'*. Many people who make a distinction seem to base their reasoning on the size of the Earth animal, and also the puns. (We know that a *qovIj* is smaller than a *ngavyaw'*. *ngavyaw'* is a pun based on a literary wolf dog, whereas *qovIj* is a pun based off a stereotypical pet dog name.) Using *ngavyaw'* for a wolf isn't exactly canon. It's probably closer to the unofficial but widespread use of *jabbI'ID* "data transmission" as a term for "email".