On 7/19/2017 1:46 PM, Ed Bailey wrote:
If the play is from before {cha} and {pu'} had their modern meanings, maybe it's not a dodge after all. Perhaps these words translate at least roughly from no' Hol as "slings" and "arrows," and are connected to the irregular plural of {peng} and the {pu'} in {DaSpu'}.
First, let's remember that /Hamlet/ is not by Okrand; it's not canonical. Don't go crazy trying to work this into your personal understanding of Klingon. Then, for those who haven't read it, know that /Hamlet/ is given a backstory in its introduction: it's actually a fairly modern Klingon play, written by a Klingon after Klingons have achieved spaceflight and apparently after contact with the Federation. But the sneaky Federation has waged a propaganda war against the Klingon Empire and created a false history of Earth literature, in which Shex'pir was actually a human from many centuries earlier, so it's hard to go and find proof that this isn't true. This edition of /Hamlet/ is an attempt to counter this propaganda and "reconstruct" what the original Klingon must have looked like. So when /Hamlet/ says *cha pu' je,* you should take it literally and in its modern sense. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name