qatlho', janSIy. So, the "take home point" (as Americans say), is that if we say "the human species", this confers a broader meaning than just saying "the human race". Also, we can say "the American Indian race", "the Black or African American race", "the Native Hawaiian race", etc (https://www.iowadatacenter.org/aboutdata/raceclassification). But we can't say ""the European species", since a European can produce offspring with American Indian. So, perhaps, the more accurate would be "the survival of the human species", while saying "the survival of the human race" can mean exactly the same, but perhaps it has the added flavor, that in the end we're all one people, needing to put aside any racial conflicts. Or to put all this in context.. There's a spaceship carrying the last 10000 humans who survived a nuclear holocaust. The ship has just left earth, so the captain stands before them in order to give a motivational speech. If the captain says: "We must fight to ensure the survival of the human species", then he's being 100% accurate. But if he says "We must fight to ensure the survival of the human race", then he essentially gives the flavor of "listen morons, there's no black and white, no skin color; we're in the shit together, so shut up and accept each other, or humanity takes the finger". Unless someone disagrees with the above, that's how I'll be using {Segh}/{mut} from now on. -- Dana'an https://sacredtextsinklingon.wordpress.com/ Ζεὺς ἦν, Ζεὺς ἐστίν, Ζεὺς ἔσσεται· ὦ μεγάλε Ζεῦ

I think that Gene Roddenberry sought to put up a fight against racism, but was doing so in a culture that was so racist that he was accidentally racist as he created lots of aliens played by actors wearing makeup and prosthetics. Technically, yes, members of different races can interbreed and members of different species cannot. Meanwhile, the Star Trek universe referred to beings from different planets as different species even though, in that universe, they were capable of interbreeding. In that way, basically, all hominids were one species, and green, grey, blue, tan, brown and other colors of skin, bumpy foreheads, pointy ears, horns and whatever mark different races. There were a few non-hominid species, like the rock-eating tunnel borers, and the sentient microbes who called humans “Ugly Bags of Mostly Water”, but most of them were gussied up people who speak English. Keep in mind that the idea of race changes over time. In America, we used to consider Irish immigrants members of the Irish race. We called Italian immigrants members of the Italian race. As the immigration waves that brought each of these “races” fell farther into the past and multiple generations of those from those waves have lived here for generations, often interbreeding with “White (British stock)” people, they have become accepted as “White”. Heck. Even the purest Brits are “Anglo-Saxons”, which doesn’t sound very much like a pure race. Never mind that a lot of Black people were here long before the Irish, Italian, Chinese, etc. other “races” in America, the whole reason there are a group of formerly recognized “races” to now be gathered together under the name White is to mark them as inherently different from Black people, and the whole reason that boundary is so important is the centuries-long period during which Whites enslaved Blacks claiming that there was a genetic superiority of one race over the other to justify the otherwise unjustifiable dominance. Race isn’t really the problem. Dominance is the problem. Race just draws the lines between abusers and the abused. We’ve never considered blondes to be a race, or redheads, even though the color difference is at least as marked as the difference between “White” and “Black” skin, and Blacks and Whites can interbreed just as effectively as blondes and redheads. So, basically, species is a biological term referring to a boundary within which interbreeding works, while race means whatever a culture says it means. The Chinese are notoriously racist, drawing lines between different races the rest of us would just call “Chinese”, because unlike the Chinese, we don’t see the difference between Hans and all the other races in China.

On Jan 27, 2022, at 9:59 AM, Steven Boozer <sboozer@uchicago.edu> wrote:

AFAIK there are no examples of {mut} in canon so I don’t know why De’vID says that “{mut} seems to refer only to biological organisms” but the English word certainly does. Here’s what I have in my notes:

mut species (n)

(KGT 132): Another set of similes link humanoid species of various kinds to certain qualities …

"We are similar as a species." (Kor, TOS "Errand of Mercy")

Segh race (type, sort, class) (n)

Hem tlhIngan Segh 'ej maHemtaH 'e' wIHech Klingons are a proud race, and we intend to go on being proud. (TKW)

batlh tlhIngan Segh yIHub Defend the Klingon race with honor. (ST5 notes)

Segh: bI'rel tlharghDuj Model: B'rel Scout (KBoP Poster) [a.k.a. the B’rel-class scout]

(KGT 41): The upper classes, for their part, incorporate a few archaic words into their speech. This is true among all age groups in the upper classes. It may be considered a sign of erudition and respect for tradition; it does not represent an aversion to change."

(KGT 42): Similarly, the common word for teacup is {Dargh HIvje'} (literally, 'tea drinking vessel'). Among the upper classes, the word {tu'lum} is used with some frequency, though, strictly speaking, this archaic word used to mean only a cup made of metal. … Among the lower classes — except for those working as servants for the higher classes — words like … {tu'lum} are known but seldom used...

Advocate Kolos told Archer that the “warrior class” has taken control of Klingon society (ca. 2130). (ENT "Judgment")

(KGT 153): … the *Hur'q*, a race of humanoids from the Gamma Quadrant

And there are also words like {ghantoH} “model, example, pattern” and {DI’on} “characteristic, trait” to factor in.

-- Voragh

From: tlhIngan-Hol On Behalf Of De'vID

On Thu, 27 Jan 2022 at 13:06, mayqel qunen'oS <mihkoun@gmail.com <mailto:mihkoun@gmail.com>> wrote: Can an American please explain to me, what the difference is between the noun {Segh} and the noun {mut}?

According to Ca'Non:

Segh (n) "race (type, sort, class)" mut (n) "species"

In science fiction movies/series I've heard both "the survival of the human race" and "the survival of the human species", so I can't understand what's the difference between these two.

Does an American "feel" any difference between these two words? And I ask for the opinion of Americans, because 'oqranD is an American too, so I'm trying to understand what he means by each of these two words.

I'm not an American, but {Segh} can be used for ships (the BoP poster has {Segh: bI'rel tlharghDuj}) into addition to {tlhIngan Segh}, whereas {mut} seems to refer only to biological organisms.

{tlhIngan Segh} has been used in canon to refer generally to Klingons, but I would expect {tlhIngan mut} to be used only in scientific contexts. _______________________________________________ tlhIngan-Hol mailing list tlhIngan-Hol@lists.kli.org http://lists.kli.org/listinfo.cgi/tlhingan-hol-kli.org

As impossible as faster-then-light travel? <g> There was a sort of in-universe explanation for this: Following clues provided by Professor Richard Galen, Capt. Picard, Klingon Capt. Nu'Daq, Cardassian Gul Ocett, and an unnamed Romulan Commander raced to discover a four-billion-year-old genetically encoded message from an ancient humanoid species. (who may have been “The Preservers.” Since we’re all humanoid species are genetically related this explains how we’re able to interbreed. It probably explains why the Universal Translator works since the language centers in our brains are similar. According to Memory Alpha, TNG “The Chase” was “inspired by Carl Sagan's novel Contact<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contact_(novel)>, in which clues to the nature of the universe are discovered in a long calculation of π (pi).” See https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/The_Chase_(episode) Voragh ================================================== From: tlhIngan-Hol On Behalf Of SuStel Star Trek's cross-breeding aliens are so outrageously impossible that to even try to make sense of it is an endeavor doomed to failure. Such characters are almost always writers' attempts to introduce a human perspective into an otherwise alien culture, at least in early stories. Once a franchise establishes that hybridization is inexplicably and freely available, hybrid characters start to show up simply because of the sheer impossibility of them not to. This is an instance where one must simply suspend one's disbelief and move on.

chay' SpockvaD Sorpuq 'Iw HIj Amanda chI'ID? - DloraH On Thu, 2022-01-27 at 16:38 -0500, SuStel wrote:

On 1/27/2022 4:20 PM, Steven Boozer wrote:

...

There was a sort of in-universe explanation for this:  Following clues provided by Professor Richard Galen, Capt. Picard, Klingon Capt. Nu'Daq, Cardassian Gul Ocett, and an unnamed Romulan Commander raced to discover a four-billion-year-old genetically encoded message from an ancient humanoid species. (who may have been “The Preservers.”  Since we’re all humanoid species are genetically related this explains how we’re able to interbreed.

No it doesn't. The message was encoded four billion years ago, and in all that time, all of Earth life evolved. We can't interbreed with our closest relatives separated by only ten million years or so, let alone four billion. Even if the story's premise is true, human beings still have more genetic code in common with an oak tree than with a Cardassian. This explanation raises even more questions and impossibilities than it answers.

It really is a matter of not paying any attention to that man behind the curtain. Star Trek intelligent species are humanoid because the actors portraying them are human. They speak English because English- speaking audiences need to be able to understand them and because inventing new alien languages is a lot of work. They can interbreed with humans because it's convenient to the writers that they do so, and it's easy for audiences to accept this because they basically look like humans anyway.

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