On 27 March 2017 at 15:32, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name> wrote:
On 3/27/2017 8:10 AM, Lieven wrote:
Now on Facebook, our good friend and experience Klingonist SuStel started to argue it is not a canon word, just an English word prounced with a Klingon accent.
WRONG WRONG WRONG. You wanna know why I argue with you? This is why I argue with you. You don't actually read what I write; you reduce what I say to nonsense.
I said there's the canon of everything Okrand says about Klingon, and there's the canon of what is recognized by Klingons as Klingon. I said there are three categories of canon: native Klingon words, loan words that have become Klingon, and on-the-spot phonetic adaptations. Okrand specifically said that you should use the latter for elephant: an on-the-spot "Klingon version of Federation Standard." He said to Klingon-ify an English word.
Other words like pItSa' and 'epIl fall into one of the two latter categories: loan words and phonetic adaptations. I accept them as canonical, but I cannot identify whether they are loan words that Klingons would recognize or merely on-the-spot phonetic adaptations. And neither can you.
FWIW, I draw the same distinction as SuStel. Also, {'e'levan} and {mauS} appear to be names (which just happen to also be words in English), so that makes them different from {'epIl naH} or {pItSa' chab}. Note that in the examples we've seen of Klingon terms which are loan words from English, the borrowed term is followed by a word to indicate what type of object it is: {Sutra'ber naH}, {'anyan 'oQqar}, {bama Hol}, and so on. Klingon seems to be stricter than English (or German) with regards to indicating noun type. For example, in English, "English", "French", and "German" can be either languages or people, whereas in Klingon, {tlhIngan}, {romuluSngan}, {vulqangan} are people, and {tlhIngan Hol}, {romuluS Hol}, and {vulqan Hol} are languages. The fact that {'e'levan} and {mauS} are not rendered as {'e'levan Sargh'a'} and {mauS Qa'Hom} (or however a Klingon would classify such animals) would indicate that {'e'levan} is seen as a proper name here, not a loan word. -- De'vID