tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Wed Jun 07 07:18:28 1995
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Re: Re PetaQ
According to [email protected]:
>
> [email protected] (William H. Martin) wrote:
> >"Have you been demoted? When you wrote your last message, you
> were a so-called honor-commander."
This is falsely attributed to me. I didn't say that. It was
quoted from an earlier post.
> In answer to this I must answer ghobe'. I just think that commander worked
> out better than Honor-commander, since what I was trying to say is commander
> in cheif.
As I said in MY post, I don't translate ranks. Klingon and
English ranks do not necessarily have equivalents.
> As far as petaQ goes, I have rewatched my Voyager episode where the Klingon
> B'Elanna says it to her Human half. I took it in to my schools T.V. studio
> and ran it through a voice anylizer. I came up with "be'taH". You could
> distinctally hear the "be" and not "pe" so therefore I wish to once again
> enter my opinion that it is a Negative Woman.
In the first place, you were analyzing the speech of an actress
who has probably never met Okrand or called him on the phone,
let alone been coached by him. The TV series is notorious for
generating random syllables and calling them "Klingon". It was
remarkable that she bothered to even TRY to apparently say
something related to the language.
Secondly, in attempting to deepen and force her speech as much
as possible, it would be quite easy for the actress to slide
her {p} sound towards a {b} sound. They are both plosive
consonants with exactly the same mouth position. One is
vocalized and the other is not, and all she had to do was begin
vocalizing a little too soon and an intended {p} comes out
sounding like a {b}.
Thirdly, I have little faith in voice analyzing equipment
somehow adding more validity to one's opinion as to what sound
a person is making. Face it. The only way to know exactly what
she said is to ask her what she meant to be saying. Short of
that, you have an opinion and not a fact. I have personally
been quite certain that I understood a line from a movie or TV
show several times after repeatedly replaying it at high
volume, staring at the lips and struggling at precise analysis,
only to later recognize that I was mistaken.
Face it, there is no such thing as {*be'taH*} in Klingon. Both
syllables sound like verb suffixes, but there is no root
(unless there was a syllable that didn't quite make it to the
recording). If the first syllable is a noun, then it can't take
the second syllable as a suffix because {-taH} is a verb
suffix, not a noun suffix. If the second syllable is a verb,
then what we have can't be a compound noun, so there is no
justification for combining the syllables.
If we instead consider the syllables to be separate words {be'
taH} then either {be'} is the object and we are saying
{He/she/it endures a female}, which is a rather odd thing to
say in this setting, or, as you suggest, "A negative angled
female", which is even WEIRDER, since NOBODY HAS A CLUE AS TO
WHAT OKRAND MEANS BY "BE AT A NEGATIVE ANGLE". I personally
think Okrand put that entry in there as a cruel joke with no
specific real meaning in mind. He has never, to my knowledge,
used it in canon to indicate what it means. Senseless arguments
have repeatedly raged on this definition and it has become clear
that until Okrand comments on it, the definition is useless.
Meanwhile, this Klingon woman was clearly tossing a derrogatory
term at her human form, which is exactly what the word {petaQ}
was created for. Deal with it.
> yo' 'aj Lessem
> ra'wI'
> 'ejyo'ra'
> yuQjIjDIvI'
>
charghwI'.
Just charghwI'
--
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