Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2025 21:39:50 -0400 From: "Mark E. Shoulson" <mark@kli.org> To: tlhingan-hol@lists.kli.org Subject: Re: [tlhIngan Hol] More puns Message-ID: <30fbe505-0976-4ccf-a521-a6e6d632de60@kli.org> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"

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Not to dispute your analysis necessarily... On 7/21/25 9:26 PM, James Landau via tlhIngan-Hol wrote:

pa'nItlh (aisle): "Clean up" backwards. As in the PA announcement: "Josh, clean up aisle 24!" I thought of this more as "room-finger"; an aisle being sort of a long extended room/empty space (but that would be a hallway?)

I didn't even think of "room-finger"! The rightmost column on the wiki qep'a' 2025 wordlist, though, says it's new instead of combined. There are a number of errors in that column, though.

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poH (session, shift): "Hop"-ing from one employee's shift to another. I feel this is a coincidence, since the other meaning of "poH" (time) is perfectly sensible here, and this is just informing us that the meaning extends to this.

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teb (compensate, monetarily): "Bet" backwards. Same with this.? The ordinary meaning "fill" makes sense as a metaphoric use for compensation.

That makes sense.

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'abched (vitamin): Vitamins A, B, C, D, and E. Yeah, that was so obvious even I noticed it.

What exactly do you mean by "even I"? Are you saying that you're usually unsuccessful at noticing puns in Klingon words?

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'erQen (phrase): "Phrase" os a homophone of "frays". *Qen* means to be naked, like a frayed object. "Er" is the German word for "he", which suggests that it's the form of a verb you'd use with "he", i.e. the third person singular present. Like adding -s onto "fray". Does this sound convincing?

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Not particularly, but it doesn't have to be.? There doesn't *have* to be a pun basis for every word, but that doesn't mean it's wrong to find one.? Even if what you find is totally not what Okrand had in mind and is purely a figment of your imagination, it can still be a useful mnemonic, if it works for you.

Food for thought.

ngel'aH = peasant, partly xifan hol from "fellah" (Arabic word for a peasant)

I noticed that one too, when I started checking the ng- words for xifan puns, and was going to post on this mailing list about *ngel'aH*/fellah, but you beat me to it! Sharp eyes!

From: e.t@qeylis.net

qech'on -> Lithium (and/or batteries made thereof) have a high chance to "catch on" fire.

Wow, I didn't notice this one! Probably because if I were Okrand and creating a Klingon word based on "catch on fire", I would've spelled it *qech'an* with an A instead of *qech'on* with an O. *tamler* and such words are spelt with A, after all.

From: Jeremy Silver <jp.silver@tiscali.co.uk>

There had to be a punny reason he didn't just use {puj}

+1 I was really expecting that Okrand would simply make the word for "lithium" *puj*, based on the precedent with *cha'puj*.