tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Fri Aug 02 16:29:33 1996
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Well. Formerly Re: KLBC: jIlIH'egh [Introduction]
- From: Will Martin <[email protected]>
- Subject: Well. Formerly Re: KLBC: jIlIH'egh [Introduction]
- Date: Fri, 2 Aug 1996 19:29:21 -0400 ()
- Priority: NORMAL
yavDaq chIch bIQ Hal'e' chenmoH vay'. DaqvetlhDaq HIghom.
"Meet me at the well."
Is that clear enough? The point here is that "well" is a
simple concept to us because it is a common object. It got
a short name because it was a concept we wanted to use
early on in our development of the langauge.
Maybe Klingons never made wells. Maybe springs are common
on Qo'noS, or maybe they just don't get all that thirsty,
or maybe they get their water from succulent plants or
from qagh, which always looks kinda moist to ME.
We have no Klingon name for "well" and no easy replacement
for it because we've never seen a Klingon well and we have
no specific word for one.
What's the Klingon word "doornail"? What is a doornail,
anyway? I know it is dead. Very dead. But if I saw one, I
would probably not recognize it as an object with that name.
Perhaps Klingons are this way about human wells. They see a
word in their English-Klingon dictionary that translates to
"Vertical column of open space dug into the ground in order
to acquire water in a place where there is no naturally
occuring surface water; sometimes an open pit surrounded by
a cylindrical stone wall around waist height, or sometimes
just a pipeline. It can be a reference to the entire
structure or to the surface area at the top."
How do we know Klingons would have any use for this word?
Only Maltz knows for sure, and so far, he is not telling.
On Wed, 17 Jul 1996 08:32:39 -0700 Dave Yeung
<[email protected]> wrote:
> >I thought there was
a word for "mine" as a noun someplace; I just didn't
> >look carefully. Yes, bIQ tlhIlHal sounds quite nice for "well" (though
> >since it's a compound of Hal I'm not sure it's really any better than just
> >"bIQ Hal," unless you have a need to specifically note that it's like a
> >mine.) ~mark
>
> The problem is that if someone said {bIQ Hal} "water source", I would
> understand it to mean maybe a tap, a river mouth, a spring, etc. but not
> specifically a well. On the other hand {bIQ tlhIlHal} "water mine" seems
> to me to refer to a well pretty unambiguously. But until we have a word
> for "well", we'll just have to improvise.
>
>
> dave yeung
>
----------------------
Will Martin
[email protected]