maj, SuStel; jIyaj. Qatlh Sojvam, muSIghchu'mo' 'elaDya' Hol. Qun be' wIDelmeH, naDev wa' mu' wIlo', 'a Qun loD wIDelmeH, jaS mu'vam wIlo'. vaj ghu'vam vIbItlhchoHpu'mo', nom choHlaHbe' yabwIj. qanchoHpu'chugh ngavyaw', jaS DavangmoHlaHbe'.. ~ Dana'an

On 4/13/2021 8:50 AM, mayqel qunen'oS wrote:

mumISqu'moHmo' Sojvam, Sojvam vIQulqa'pu', 'ej Dajbogh vay' vItu'pu'. wa'DIch yIlaD:

* god https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/god the Being perfect in power, wisdom, and goodness who is worshipped (as in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism) as creator and ruler of the universe.

* goddess https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/goddess a female god

* emperor https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/emperor the sovereign or supreme male monarch of an empire

* empress https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/empress 1 : the wife or widow of an emperor 2 : a woman who is the sovereign or supreme monarch of an empire

* god https://www.dictionary.com/browse/god one of several deities, especially a male deity, presiding over some portion of worldly affairs.

* goddess https://www.dictionary.com/browse/goddess a female god or deity

* emperor https://www.dictionary.com/browse/emperor the male sovereign or supreme ruler of an empire

* empress https://www.dictionary.com/browse/empress - a female ruler of an empire. - the consort of an emperor.

You can't just go by dictionary definitions here; usage is more subtle and complicated. As far as official titles go, these mostly just show the sexism built into the language: an emperor is a male ruler, but an empress could be a female ruler or the consort of the ruler. But the male consort of a female ruler would not be called king or emperor. The titles are not equal. And this doesn't even take into account that sometimes women gain a traditionally male title and don't use the female version of it. (Take, for instance, the case of "King Peggy": Peggielene Bartels - Wikipedia <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peggielene_Bartels>.) I do not take Okrand's use of "emperor" for *voDleH* and *ta'* to necessarily mean that these words only refer to men. Sexism is often unconscious and culturally driven, and I would find it perfectly plausible to hear that Okrand simply hadn't considered women when he gave us *voDleH,* and that the word is gender-neutral. On the other hand, if it does only refer to men, then the sexism is in leaving the female version out of the dictionary. So don't take these dictionary definitions as clear evidence for what's happening in Klingon. This is the sort of thing that needs the Word of Okrand to clarify. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name

It makes sense that this is an unintended side effect of having a vocabulary originally driven by the needs of specific movie scripts. Okrand has often told the story of how he went through the Klingon spoken section and subtitles of ST1 and invented Clipped Klingon grammar and vocabulary to make this scene legitimately mean what the subtitles say it means, then went through the script for ST3 and similarly made sure the language had both vocabulary and grammar to translate anything that any Klingon says in the script in Klingon or in English (since the directory might change his mind as to which a character would speak), and then looked at all the original series TV shows to make sure that anything a Klingon said in English could have been said in Klingon. Since then, he’s added vocabulary for Star Trek novels, his own books, audio recordings, and the computer game, Friends of Maltz, third party language courses, and other requests. He’s generally made the glosses vague enough to later cover unforeseen vocabulary needs, backfilling from time to time to explain more specific meaning (like whether the subject of {vIH} is the thing in motion or the being causing the thing to be in motion or both — it’s just the thing in motion). This vocabulary evolved, starting with an urgent need to cover specific expressions and continues expanding to cover random additions based on the sporadic needs of a broad population including die-hard Klingonists who want the capacity to converse without frustration on any topic, to fiction authors who have no interest in the language beyond being cool enough to include a random Klingon noun phrase here and there in their novel, trying to show their Sci-Fi chops by expressing a Klingon concept too alien for human words to express. Qov, a long-time, dedicated Klingonist became a pilot after learning the language, and now we have pilot words. Someone makes a cut-away poster of a Klingon Bird of Prey, and now we have terms for parts of a spaceship we didn’t have before. Third party language teaching software required Klingon proper nouns for many nation names on Earth. Okrand didn’t think about goddesses and empresses because nobody asked him to. This says less about Klingon culture or language biases than it does about script writers, novel authors, movie directors {taH pagh taHbe’}, Friends of Maltz, architects, and others who have poked Okrand, asking for words. Someday, he may give us separate words for "goddess" or “empress” or he may explicitly tell us that the words we already have for the males also apply to the females. For now, the safest guess is to use the words we have, if gender doesn’t really matter all that much, or add context to explain the gender if it’s really necessary. If you just add {be’}, somebody might misinterpret you to mean “emperor that rules over females” or a specific female’s emperor. In English, we cover this with non-gendered words when we refer to “Captain Janeway”, assuming that people know that she’s female or we might explicitly tell people that Captain Janeway is a woman, if that matters for some reason. Meanwhile, anyone serving under Janeway should basically respond to the “Captain” part of her name the same way whether it refers to a male or female. Similarly, if a god or goddess told you jump, their gender might not be as important to consider as the answer to “How high?" charghwI’ ‘utlh (ghaH, ghaH, -Daj)

On Apr 13, 2021, at 10:33 AM, De'vID <de.vid.jonpin@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, 13 Apr 2021 at 15:17, SuStel <sustel@trimboli.name <mailto:sustel@trimboli.name>> wrote:

I do not take Okrand's use of "emperor" for voDleH and ta' to necessarily mean that these words only refer to men. Sexism is often unconscious and culturally driven, and I would find it perfectly plausible to hear that Okrand simply hadn't considered women when he gave us voDleH, and that the word is gender-neutral. On the other hand, if it does only refer to men, then the sexism is in leaving the female version out of the dictionary.

In TKD, {joH} (and also {jaw}) are defined only as "lord". In KGT, it is explained (p.40) that {joH} can also mean "lady" (as a title). I think Dr. Okrand was primarily motivated by necessity here: when TKD was written, the title {joH} was applied only to Kruge. By the time KGT was written, we saw various upper-class Klingons referred to as "lord" so-and-so as well as "lady" so-and-so, and thus the definition was expanded. The sexism in the vocabulary, if it's there, was accidental.

Similarly, we have only heard about Klingon emperors on the TV shows and movies. (Are there any screen canon Klingon empresses? Maybe we missed an opportunity with L'Rell.) Undoubtedly, were a Star Trek writer to mention a Klingon empress on the show, Dr. Okrand would reveal that {voDleH}/{ta'} could also mean "empress", or alternatively reveal the correct Klingon term for this title. Until then, we don't know that {voDleH}/{ta'} is gender-neutral like {joH}, although, given the absence of other gendered nouns and titles in the vocabulary, this seems likely.

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

Also, we have a word for “empress”. We don’t have one for “chancellor-ess”. charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.

On Apr 13, 2021, at 12:32 PM, Lieven L. Litaer <levinius@gmx.de> wrote:

Am 13.04.2021 um 16:33 schrieb De'vID:

...

so-and-so as well as "lady" so-and-so, and thus the definition was expanded. The sexism in the vocabulary, if it's there, was accidental.

And still, the sexism is in the English translation, not Klingon.

...

Similarly, we have only heard about Klingon emperors on the TV shows and movies. (Are there any screen canon Klingon empresses? Maybe we missed an opportunity with L'Rell.) Undoubtedly, were a Star Trek writer to mention a Klingon empress on the show, Dr. Okrand would reveal that {voDleH}/{ta'} could also mean "empress", or alternatively reveal the correct Klingon term for this title.

Okrand had a good chance in ST6, when Azetbur took over the role of her father, chancellor Gorkon. In the scene, she was addressed as "madame chancellor".

The new word {Qang} for "chancellor" appeared in the addendum of TKD, which means it was discovered for Star Trek 6.

Of course, we can still not know if Okrand was aware of the ending of the movie, maybe not knowing that there was a female version of chancellor needed. But he translated a dialogue for a scene wit that female chancellor, and the script was very clear. Unfortunately, the word Chancellor did not appear in the translation.

Of course, this is about chancellor, not empereror.

...

{voDleH}/{ta'} is gender-neutral like {joH}, although, given the absence of other gendered nouns and titles in the vocabulary, this seems likely.

I think so, too. Also remember that {ghaH} and {chaH} are gender-neutral.

-- Lieven L. Litaer see http://klingon.wiki/En/ST6 http://klingon.wiki/En/Gender http://klingon.wiki/Word/Qang _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org

On 4/13/2021 4:41 PM, Will Martin wrote:

Okay, so a new question occurred to me… Maybe we’ve been asking the wrong question.

Do we have any sex-gendered nouns besides mother, father, and other blood relatives or spouses? Even then, Okrand slid in some odd ones, like {tey’}, which basically means “a not-gender-specific child of a same-gender sibling of one of your parents”.

If there are no non-blood-relative-or-spouse sex-gender-specific nouns, then the definitions are likely generally mail as a simple style point in Okrand’s writing, like saying, “A person must trust his instincts,” instead of “her instincts” or “his or her instincts” or “their instincts”. It’s just the way he writes them, by default.

We have *ghojmoq*/nurse, nanny, governess,/ which does not appear to have a male version. Again, it's the English translation that is gendered; we don't know about the Klingon word. Other than that, no we don't. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name

On 4/13/2021 9:06 PM, Will Martin wrote:

The kids with all the ship schematic diagrams in Galaxy Quest got NOTHING on THIS crowd.

The depth of our capacity to pull out any random detail from canon boggles the mind.

Not at all. I just searched my personal dictionary for "ess" and pressed Enter until I came upon something relevant. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name

Am 14.04.2021 um 09:08 schrieb De'vID:

Again, this was a case of necessity. The word was made up by TNG writers for the episode "Sins of the Father". In the script,[...] It's literally been used once to refer to a specific character who happened to be female, so we can't infer if it can or cannot refer to a male caretaker of a young child.

The same story for {So'chIm}: "Marc answered this one, not Maltz: Actually, So'chIm is from a TNG episode (it's written "soh-chim" in the script). Worf asks Troi to be Alexander's So'chIm, which he describes as being Alexander's "surrogate mother" who'd take over being responsible for Alexander if anything were to happen to Worf. (Worf also says this would make Troi his stepsister, more or less.) The website Memory Alpha says a soh-chim is "most closely approximated" by stepsister/stepbrother (but I think that's not accurate — the soh-chim has a connection to the child, not the child's parents; I think the script has Worf and Troi talking about stepsister/stepbrother is so they could make a joke about Lwaxana Troi being Worf's stepmother) and is similar to the Human concept of "godparent" (though the word "godparent" is not in the script). Even though the only person we know about who is a soh-chim happens to be female, I think it's reasonable to assume that the individual chosen to be responsible for a child could be of any gender. So "godparent" is a good approximation. If a gender distinction has to be made, add loD or be' after So'chIm." (qepHom 2020) klingon.wiki/Word/So-chIm -- Lieven L. Litaer aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany" http://www.tlhInganHol.com

On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 17:17, Steven Boozer <sboozer@uchicago.edu> wrote:

AFAIK Okrand has never provided an official spelling, but see {ghIntaq} “battle spear” which may well be a metaphor for the person.

In the glossary to K.R.A. DeCandido's "A Burning House", on p.393, it says: "{ghIntaq}. A type of spear with a wooden haft and a curved, two-bladed metal point. Also the name given to a person who serves as a close and trusted adviser to a House. It is possible that the latter usage evolved from the first, with the adviser being analogized to a House head's trusted weapon. Sometimes Anglicized as gin'tak. [Spear first seen in "Birthright Part 2" (TNG); adviser first referenced in "Firstborn" (TNG).]" -- De'vID

De’vID, thanks for the DeCandido citation. Using the name of a weapon to refer to a person is not unknown, although the only ones in English I can think of right now are “gunsel” (a criminal carrying a gun) and “hired gun” (a hit man or, more broadly, anyone hired for a specific and often ethically dubious job). Speaking of which, the Soviet Cheka (forerunner of the NKVD/MGB/KGB/FSB, etc.) was called in Russian Меч и щит революции (“The Sword and Shield of the Revolution”). See https://litci.org/en/the-cheka-sword-and-shield-of-the-revolution/ and also https://alphahistory.com/russianrevolution/cheka/ which has a picture of a Cheka badge featuring the sword. Can you and Lieven think of examples in German? __ Voragh ________________________________________________________________ From: tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol-bounces@lists.kli.org> On Behalf Of De'vID On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 17:17, Steven Boozer <sboozer@uchicago.edu<mailto:sboozer@uchicago.edu>> wrote: AFAIK Okrand has never provided an official spelling, but see {ghIntaq} “battle spear” which may well be a metaphor for the person. In the glossary to K.R.A. DeCandido's "A Burning House", on p.393, it says: "{ghIntaq}. A type of spear with a wooden haft and a curved, two-bladed metal point. Also the name given to a person who serves as a close and trusted adviser to a House. It is possible that the latter usage evolved from the first, with the adviser being analogized to a House head's trusted weapon. Sometimes Anglicized as gin'tak. [Spear first seen in "Birthright Part 2" (TNG); adviser first referenced in "Firstborn" (TNG).]" -- De'vID

There are other examples in English. A young prankster is often referred to as a “real pistol”, even though under normal conditions there’s no physical association between a hand weapon and a mischievous boy. People “spearhead” a mission or project. Considering specific individuals, there was the gangster, Machine Gun Kelly. A leader in technology or research is often referred to as The Cutting Edge in their field. An impressive performer is “Da Bomb”. It’s not a stretch to think that Klingons would describe a special, trusted relationship in terms of a weapon. charghwI’ vaghnerya’ngan rInpa’ bomnIS be’’a’ pI’.

On Apr 15, 2021, at 10:18 AM, Steven Boozer <sboozer@uchicago.edu> wrote:

De’vID, thanks for the DeCandido citation.

Using the name of a weapon to refer to a person is not unknown, although the only ones in English I can think of right now are “gunsel” (a criminal carrying a gun) and “hired gun” (a hit man or, more broadly, anyone hired for a specific and often ethically dubious job).

Speaking of which, the Soviet Cheka (forerunner of the NKVD/MGB/KGB/FSB, etc.) was called in Russian Меч и щит революции (“The Sword and Shield of the Revolution”). See https://litci.org/en/the-cheka-sword-and-shield-of-the-revolution/ <https://litci.org/en/the-cheka-sword-and-shield-of-the-revolution/> and also https://alphahistory.com/russianrevolution/cheka/ <https://alphahistory.com/russianrevolution/cheka/> which has a picture of a Cheka badge featuring the sword.

Can you and Lieven think of examples in German?

__ Voragh ________________________________________________________________ From: tlhIngan-Hol <tlhingan-hol-bounces@lists.kli.org> On Behalf Of De'vID

On Wed, 14 Apr 2021 at 17:17, Steven Boozer <sboozer@uchicago.edu <mailto:sboozer@uchicago.edu>> wrote: AFAIK Okrand has never provided an official spelling, but see {ghIntaq} “battle spear” which may well be a metaphor for the person.

In the glossary to K.R.A. DeCandido's "A Burning House", on p.393, it says:

"{ghIntaq}. A type of spear with a wooden haft and a curved, two-bladed metal point. Also the name given to a person who serves as a close and trusted adviser to a House. It is possible that the latter usage evolved from the first, with the adviser being analogized to a House head's trusted weapon. Sometimes Anglicized as gin'tak. [Spear first seen in "Birthright Part 2" (TNG); adviser first referenced in "Firstborn" (TNG).]"

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

On Tue, Apr 13, 2021 at 4:41 PM Will Martin wrote:

Do we have any sex-gendered nouns besides mother, father, and other blood relatives or spouses?

You may add to the list {So'chIm} with a question mark: Okrand said to this "Even though the only person we know about who is a soh-chim happens to be female, I think it's reasonable to assume that the individual chosen to be responsible for a child could be of any gender." (qepHom 2020) -> full quote on http://klingon.wiki/Word/So-chIm I think all words have been answered already, but I have started a list of such words on the Klingon Language Wiki: http://klingon.wiki/En/Gender -- Lieven L. Litaer aka the "Klingon Teacher from Germany" http://www.tlhInganHol.com http://klingon.wiki/En/Hamletmachine

On 4/14/2021 10:29 AM, Will Martin wrote:

It’s probably worth noting that English and some, but not all, other human languages have a sex-gender bias that ignores that we are not talking about Klingon grammatical gender. We are talking about Klingon words that do or do not differentiate between the sexes. Gender, in Klingon, is never sex related.

Gender in Klingon separates beings capable of language, body parts, and everything else. There’s nothing there about males or females. That’s grammatical gender.

The difference is between /grammatical gender,/ which is a system of classifying nouns according to how they agree with other grammatical aspects of the language, and /natural gender,/ which is classifying nouns according to characteristics of the referent. Natural gender can be sex-based, or it can be based on something else. Animate/inanimate is one alternative. Klingon seems to have a system of noun genders, but it's not a slam dunk to say that this is the case. For one thing, the alleged genders have minimal interaction with other areas of grammar: aside from needing to use the correct plural suffix, the only effects of gender are to connote that a noun is "scattered all about" and to be insulting if you refer to a being capable of using language as something that isn't capable of it. For another, the choice of plural suffix doesn't usually seem tied to the noun itself but the context in which the noun is used: Klingon have to think about whether to use *-pu'* or *-mey* when referring to speaking robots and birds. So while I will sometimes casually call this gender in Klingon, it's not necessarily quite so straightforward as that. Noun classes are not automatically genders.

In English, gender separated males, females, and neuters (everything else).

In French, gender separates males and females, and arbitrarily assigns male and female grammatical gender to everything English would call neuter. A lot of languages do that.

Again, it's not that straightforward. Old English had grammatical gender, but during Middle English it mostly dropped away. There are still vestiges, though. Many words related to natural gender remain, and sometimes those still possess some grammatical gender. Dictionaries will still tell you to use /blonde/ to refer to girls or women and /blond/ as a more general term. Ships and countries are sometimes referred to as /she/ and /her./ And the grammatical gender of Old English didn't always match grammatical and natural gender. It had, for instance, words meaning /wife/ in all three of its gender categories.

Grammatical gender is just an arbitrary way of grouping nouns that may or may not have anything to do with males, females, and neuter things or beings.

This bias toward sex-gender links is at the root of this discussion, since we are basically asking the question as to whether the English glosses, which have sexual gender, carry that sex-related meaning with it to the Klingon word it is linked to, even though, so far as we know, Klingons just don’t habitually consider sex gender as automatically as we do, every time we parse every single noun we ever use. For us, it is essential. For them, it’s probably, “Meh.”

But it's not essential for us. We have tons of words that aren't given a natural gender and can't be forced into one. /Farmer, captain, baby, hippie, teacher./

So, through our language, we are constantly asking ourselves about every noun, “Could I have sex with this?” while Klingons are asking, “Can this thing talk to me, or could I lose it in a battle or eat it if I kill the thing it’s attached to?"

No we don't. Grammatical gender is not about sex, and natural gender based on sex only applies to those nouns whose referents exhibit sexual characteristics. We call dogs and cats /he, she,/ or /it/ depending on the characteristics of the animals and our relationships with them, not based on whether they are sexually compatible with us. Some people will even switch between /he/she/ and /it/ based on how personal they need to be in the given situation. I find it very normal to refer to pets of known sex as /he /or/she,/ while pets of unknown sex are /it,/ but human beings of known sex (or sexual preference) are /he/ or /she,/ while those of unknown sex or preference are /they,/ never /it./ A pet of unknown sex is never /they./ Similarly, I seriously doubt Klingons base their noun classes around concern about how the noun interacts with themselves. Noun classes are just built into the language. The plural of *targh* is *targhmey,* not because I can't have a conversation with it, but because that's how you make the plural of things not capable of language. -- SuStel http://trimboli.name

More evidence comes from Klingon Monopoly: ja'chuq Dalopchu'. Qang Damoj. Complete the Rite of Succession to become chancellor. Qang QanmeH yan 'ISletlh Damuv 'e' wIvlu' You are chosen to serve on the Yan-Isleth and protect the chancellor. Presumably these instructions refer to both male and female players of the game. --Voragh From: De'vID On Tue, 13 Apr 2021 at 18:32, Lieven L. Litaer <levinius@gmx.de<mailto:levinius@gmx.de>> wrote: Of course, we can still not know if Okrand was aware of the ending of the movie, maybe not knowing that there was a female version of chancellor needed. But he translated a dialogue for a scene wit that female chancellor, and the script was very clear. Unfortunately, the word Chancellor did not appear in the translation. Near the end of the movie, when the sniper shoots at the Federation President, someone (I think it was Kerla) shouts {Qang yIQan!} (subtitled as "Protect the Chancellor!") as her bodyguards surround her. So we know that {Qang} is gender-neutral. -- De'vID