Here’s Okrand’s untranslated Facebook post to Andre (2/11/2014): [bama/mIyanma] Hol mu'mey cha'be'. mI'mey neH cha'. Okrand later re-thought his transcription for Myanmar at qepHom 2016: For *France*, pronounced in French, the "n" also indicates nasalization - it's not pronounced as an individual sound - so, for Klingon, I just skipped it: {vIraS} (not {vIranIs} or something like that). I followed the same line of thinking for {mIyama} (rather than {mIyanma}). So both {bama Hol} and {mIyama Hol} are correct, assuming they both refer to the same language. OTOH one might be a simplified official language used nation-wide vs. an “authentic” language/dialect used regionally. Does anyone know? As for the country and people – why can’t they be referred to by more than one name? E.g. Russian/Soviet, American/U.S./Yank(ee), English/British/Brits, Anglo-Saxons, Castillian/Spanish, etc. There are historical, political, bureaucratic, ethnic, and religious reasons for preferring one over the other, but most outsiders don’t know, or even care, about those reasons. (Especially imaginary aliens light years away in the Beta Quadrant over three centuries from now.) Voragh _______________________________________________________________ From: De'vID via tlhIngan-Hol On Thu, Jan 26, 2023 at 3:51 PM Steven Boozer via tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol@lists.kli.org<mailto:tlhingan-hol@lists.kli.org>> wrote: Thanks for reminding me. There’s also {bama} (Burma) and {barat} (India). I thought {mIyama} was the country and {bama Hol} was the name of the language. I don't think {bama} by itself is meaningful.

I agree with the dilemma and add the additional complication that often when we get a lexicon of a foreign language, we get the word defined by the outsider perspective instead of the insider perspective. We learn as outsiders, for instance, that “Bahasa” is the name of the language used in Malaysia, while the insider definition of “Bahasa” is “language”. It’s not their word for “our language”. It’s their generic word for “language”. They hadn’t considered a need to name their language in a “proper noun” kind of way, so we did it for them. We’ll never know if this effect or something like it applies to any of the words we’ve learned from Maltz. We certainly use it to stretch words when we want to talk about dogs or horses, etc. to develop our use of their language. pItlh charghwI’ ‘utlh (ghaH, ghaH, -Daj)

On Jan 30, 2023, at 7:06 AM, De'vID via tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol@lists.kli.org> wrote:

On Thu, Jan 26, 2023 at 9:01 PM Steven Boozer via tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol@lists.kli.org <mailto:tlhingan-hol@lists.kli.org>> wrote:

...

So both {bama Hol} and {mIyama Hol} are correct, assuming they both refer to the same language. OTOH one might be a simplified official language used nation-wide vs. an “authentic” language/dialect used regionally. Does anyone know?

As for the country and people – why can’t they be referred to by more than one name? E.g. Russian/Soviet, American/U.S./Yank(ee), English/British/Brits, Anglo-Saxons, Castillian/Spanish, etc. There are historical, political, bureaucratic, ethnic, and religious reasons for preferring one over the other, but most outsiders don’t know, or even care, about those reasons. (Especially imaginary aliens light years away in the Beta Quadrant over three centuries from now.)

Indeed, the usage of "Burma" vs. "Myanmar" is a matter of political dispute and disagreement, with the choice possibly signaling one's allegiance to certain causes. I think this is a serious pitfall of asking for vocabulary dealing with 21st century political entities, like (North and South) Korea. Presumably, these disputes have been resolved by the 23rd and 24th centuries, but Maltz can't tell us how because it would violate some kind of temporal prime directive or something (despite his somehow sending us information about the Klingon language from the future), and so he's forced to give us vocabulary which reflects the current state of affairs.

-- De'vID _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org