tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Apr 19 08:28:34 1995
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Re: subgenius
On Tue, 18 Apr 1995, Mark E. Shoulson wrote:
> From: "William H. Martin" <[email protected]>
> >According to Silauren, Half-Elven:
> >> (chay' *subgenius* vIjatlhlaH?)
> >> --naQ'avwI'
> One point to bear in mind here is that "subgenius" in the sense originally
> taken for the Church of that name, I think, used "genius" in its original
> sense, as a guardian spirit. Or did it?
the way it has been explained to me is that the Church of the Subgenius
(or whatever the official name is) refers to the 98% of humanity with an
IQ lower than X (whatever X is). if you could use verb suffixes on
nouns, i'd probably use <***wIghHa'***> or some such, but that's
obviously out of the question.
> You're basically running into the orangutan problem: what's the word in
> English for "orangutan"? There isn't one; it had to steal the word from
> somewhere else. Or leprechaun... Don't expect Klingon to have a word for
> every last concept; no language does.
no, that wasn't the expectation; i was hoping for some way to express the
notion in Klingon. that may not be possible, but it is somewhat
different than looking for one single Klingon term.
no matter -- i suspect that this concept was never really meant to be
translated. i'll see if i can't work out some solution eventually.
> ~mark
--naQ'avwI'
*&* nuqneH. *Inigo Montoya* 'oH ponglIj'e'. vavlI' DaHoHta'.
*&* yIHegh'eghrup.
*&* -- from the Princess Bride