I’ll go farther and share that I think that {jatlh} originally was supposed to take languages or speeches as object and {ja’} was originally supposed to have people as object (hence {ja’chuq} is a word in the word list and {jatlhchuq} is not),

I don't think so. I think ja' being glossed tell, report suggests that something like a status report was always a possible meaning. This is backed up by the fact that one of the lines in Star Trek III is Kruge saying "Report status!" and both ja' and Dotlh are in the original edition of the dictionary. I'll bet that Okrand had a translated version at hand just in case it was asked for: Dotlh ja'!

I also think that qaja'pu' is an early sign of Okrand either not thinking about or (possibly intentionally) not distinguishing between direct and indirect objects in Klingon. I don't think it was ever the case that the one and only possible object of ja' is the entity being spoken to.

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SuStel
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