tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Thu Jun 29 07:26:04 1995
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Re: IRCs and batlh'etlhmey
- From: "Mark E. Shoulson" <[email protected]>
- Subject: Re: IRCs and batlh'etlhmey
- Date: Thu, 29 Jun 1995 10:26:02 -0400
- In-reply-to: <[email protected]> (message from David Barron on Wed, 28 Jun 1995 18:49:12 -0400)
>Date: Wed, 28 Jun 1995 18:49:12 -0400
>Originator: [email protected]
>From: David Barron <[email protected]>
>>
>> Hi all!
>>
>> I am really new to all this Klingon stuff, and I hope you'll excuse this
>> (probably really dumb) question...
>>
>> What exactly *is* a batlh'etlh????
>A batlh'etlh (or batleH) is a curved Klingon "sword". Worf plunged one
>into the chest of another Klingon when his sweetheart was killed.
Not exactly. Open your TKD. Turn to page 181. Read the third line. Read
it again. Read it twenty more times. No cheating now, I'm watching! That
was only five. I said twenty.
Done now?
OK. Now, a *betleH* (note spelling) is a type of hand-weapon, identified
with that funky curved sword thingy David describes. That's the word for
it. Really. Not "*batleH" nor "batlh'etlh" nor anything else. Okrand
wouldn't lie to us.
Now, Kahless, in an episode, describes how he made a sword which he called
the Sword of Honor (batlh'etlh), which presumably was a betleH. This means
that *his* betleH had the name batlh'etlh. It does NOT make that the name
for the genre of weapon,, any more than we can say that all the knights
studied excalibur-play and kept their excaliburs in their scabbards.
Okrand has demonstrated that he knows most if not all of the letters used
in Klingon. If the word for the weapon *were* batlh'etlh, I'm nearly
positive he could have spelled it correctly, on his first or second try.
But he didn't. Can we figure that he probably knows more about Klingon
than we do? And that until he says that "batlh'etlh" is the generic term
that the word which he *did* say, "betleH", is? I thought so.
~mark